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Medical Marijuana Representatives Generally Support Existing Proposed Rules

Proposed and Final Rules Must Provide Adequate Control to Comfort The Feds


The Task At Hand

It’s called working “up hill” or “down hill”. When you or the issue command the high ground, your work is down hill. You have momentum or gravity with you. It is always more difficult to change the words than to have them in the first version of a law, or rule, or other regulation. If you want changes, you get to work up hill. Medical Marijuana, MMJ, and its diverse, smaller, patient oriented community seems to have taken the high ground right now in Washington State. The public policy side of this is that diverse, multiple, co-located growers and other operations are varied in structure and operation and can be very flexible and responsive to many aspects of seed-to-sale activities. There are those who will testify that smaller, numerous growers help maintain a strong diverse gene pool for healthier seeds…and the praises go on. Here in Washington the regulatory platform for recreational cannabis, provided by the LCB to implement I-502 is headed right now for a smaller, diverse, possibly less regulated environment. The only verifiable downside to this is the subtle and not so subtle hint from the Federal government that tight control is the only pathway until the federal prohibition is addressed. The US Department of Justice has said clarification of guidelines is coming soon. But soon, was first mentioned sometime in January. But who says the proposed rules won’t work? Will it just take time? Colorado, the only other state with a recreational cannabis use law has taken the giant step right from the start to combine the two platforms, MMJ and recreational use, and hold them tightly in one regulatory design. All versions of Washington’s new biennial budget have strong language calling for an LCB lead, multi-agency study and report to evaluate the possibility of a single platform here.

CCSE Founder and Patient Advocate

Greta Carter talks more about patients than she does rules or operations. We find that a constant in the MMJ community. That may be the reason this sector of Washington cannabis business seems to hold the high ground right now with the LCB’s proposed rules. If there are only two groups, the other one, Big Cannabis as described by the MMJ folks, has buried the LCB in well researched, pleadings and comments for changes in the proposed rules. So many comments the LCB has extended its consideration time by a couple of weeks just to sift through the input.

After a series of email exchanges, Carter’s final email captured the point. She told Cannabis Wire that…”(t)The draft rules are a great start! Add that the LCB continues to be responsive to our input and even to the point of openly sharing with us the rationale used to arrive at their decisions truly makes us feel like they give real value to our input. Example, we all really want concentrates in, they (LCB) did too, however we got caught up in legal interpretation of the law – so what will happen? We’ll be going for a 2/3’rd vote in January and highly likely to get passage. Proof to all of the above will be seeing what actually comes out in the next cut of the rules.

As far as big business? Ever since moving here…. I fell in love with WA’s passion to support small businesses. I don’t think that is going to change – it’s too much of who we are. At the same time, we are naive to think something of this size isn’t going to attract big business. I will say, the days of thinking of cannabis as anything but a regulated and disciplines business is soon to be over.”

Washington Cannabis Association, Ditto

Ezra Eickmeyer, representative of the Washington Cannabis Association, and a long time MMJ advocate and participant put it this way. “The newly proposed rules for the 502 industry should not cause any conflict for medical marijuana patients. If patients were expected to obtain cannabis from 502 “general use” shops there would be a problem for sure, but there is nothing in these rules or in law that forces us to do so. As long as we can pass SB 5887 next year to get licensing protection and regulation for medical cannabis operators, the medical and general use cannabis industries should have no conflicts and will work well together. Everyone will be better served by the new models.”


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