The Recommendations, The Necessity
The hearing recently before the Washington Liquor Control Board, LCB, on their budget-proviso-driven recommendations to the legislature about the two cannabis regulatory platforms in Washington State was the ghost of Christmas future, plain and simple. The budget mandated study recommendations are available on the LCB website, all active print and digital media papers and blogs,and hopefully from legislators. Soon you can even get summaries or copies of the 500 plus email comments…and there are many more verbal comments.
It’s simple; without some tightening of a decade anchored medical marijuana, MMJ, access platform in Washington, the risks are high for leakage of tax dollars, product and our future. The dilemma is the necessity of control as uttered by the US Department of Justice, and the assessment and implementation of MMJ access for real, deserving patients.
Hearing Points To Future
It is clear from the not-always-mature input from MMJ advocates that the legislature’s treatment of the LCB recommendations (which for all purposes looks like a push to a single regulatory platform) will not be easy, cry out for more empirical data, and will only emerge with a miraculous effort. Miraculous like the claims of MMJ remedies by many patients.
Are they really inflicted patients with needs? Are they really people who have exhausted consumption or choose to refrain from chemical pharmaceuticals that in some cases don’t work as well as MMJ? The testimony, if truthful, points to the latter. Speaker after speaker made passionate pleas for ability to continue growing their own medicine for purity, content, economic reasons.
Major Decisions, Minor Facts
The biggest problem before policy makers appears to be the double bladed sword of control and allowance. And the worse part is that very little data, or conclusive research exists to make solid, scientific decisions. And, without these decisions Washington may begin a march to the end of a grand experiment.
Like it or not our state’s ability to comply with rightly stated demands by US DOJ for “tolerance” of recreational cannabis use will either, essentially destroy our long running MMJ system, or will continue to cause so much confusion, leakage and federal enforcement action that both regulatory platforms are in jeopardy.
Not 420, Maybe 5%
As one witness at the hearing told a fellow MMJ advocate, “There is not a 5% chance the legislature can implement these recommendations in 60 days.” Maybe not, but the seeds of mutual existence for both MMJ and recreational use were sown at the hearing. And, unfortunately no action is a major short term victory for MMJ, and a major debilitating enterprise environment for recreational use.
It’s not about the top six recommendations (authorizations, retail, home-grow/collectives, patient registration, quantity and revenue), it’s about an MMJ system that, for a decade, has been neglected, ignored and hammered with ignorant regulations and vetoes. DO YOUR HOMEWORK!
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