What Does The Industry Think?

In an email Friday, Hilary Bricken, spokesperson and legal counsel for The Cannabis Business Group, CBG*, acknowledges the great amount of work the LCB has concluded to promulgate a set of mostly decent rules. Other interests contacted did not respond or, frankly, are being careful not to stick the hand that will feed them. They are intimidated or shy. We can say non-attributable comments sided with a concern that Washington is headed for state of “big boy” producers, processors and retailers. This does not bode well for the existing, decades old, diverse medical marijuana, MMJ, community here in the Evergreen State. If biennial budget language found in both House and Senate passed documents prevails, Washington’s MMJ community is looking down the barrel of a “move to one platform” regulatory concept. A single regulatory environment, and probably a hybrid statute combining recreational use and MMJ regulations not unlike that recently adopted by Colorado, the only other recreational cannabis use state in the nation, will be considered by the LCB during the interim of 2013 if the budget language prevails.

Appreciative But Concerned

In her email below, Bricken emphasizes the long hard hours of work of the LCB and the staff, but still has troubling concerns. Her email below:

“Though I’d like to include that the CBG appreciates the immensely hard work the LCB put into this first draft and that (we) are satisfied with the majority of the rules with the few exceptions mentioned below.

Heavy Handed

…we’re not at all surprised by the heavy handed regulations proposed by the LCB. Our surprise is with some of the definitions in the definitions section (because, if taken at face value, some of them will continue to defeat feasible access to the product where it’s needed most) and, of course, the extract ban. The CBG has adopted at least two large scale processors into its lobbying group since Thursday and plans to lobby the LCB to change the extract ban to allow the sale of certain stand alone concentrates and vapor pens. Also, the retailers in our group take exception to the random drawing and we’re hoping to work with the LCB to work off of a more merit-based system in the event they become swamped with eligible applicants.”

*http://www.cannabisbusinessgroup.org/

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