As Thursday dawns on the nation’s capital, marijuana will be a legal intoxicant, though Washington will not be Amsterdam, or even Denver. There will be no pot shops, no open-air smoking, but at least for the moment, the District — for once in its decades-long struggle for the right to govern itself — has gotten its way, and a green rush is on.

Despite a last-hours intervention by the Republican chairman of the House committee that handles D.C. affairs, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and D.C. Council members said Wednesday that they would not back down from implementing the will of the 70 percent of city voters who approved legalization in November.

Now, from private residences where Washingtonians may grow, possess and use small amounts of the drug to shops where budding entrepreneurs plan to sell accessories for cultivating marijuana plants, marijuana will quickly become a more overt part of the capital’s culture.