The bill’s sponsor calls weed “the gift that keeps on giving.” She projects it will make the state $768 million this year.
By Bernie Woodall
Washington
Governor Jay Inslee on Tuesday signed a bill that paves the way for the
state to create what is believed to be the first system in the United
States to certify marijuana as organic.
The
sponsor of the bill, Republican Senator Ann Rivers, said marijuana
certified as organically grown is likely to be on sale in Washington in
about a year and a half.
Washington
is among a handful of U.S. states where voters approved the sale of
recreational marijuana. Washington was the second state to begin legal
recreational pot sales, in mid-2014, after its voters in 2012 approved
it.
“This
is consumer-driven,” Rivers told Reuters by phone on Tuesday night. “As
we have moved forward in the legal marijuana market, we’re hearing
people say, ‘We don’t want any pesticides, fungicides, none of that
stuff in our weed.’”
The
new law “creates a voluntary program for the certification and
regulation of organic marijuana products,” to be administered by the
Washington agriculture department, according to a state analysis of the
new law.
Rivers
said the “heavy lifting” in certifying marijuana has been done by the
system of doing the same for a multitude of food products on
supermarkets shelves across America. That process just needs to be
adapted for pot, she said.
Rivers
said that legal recreational marijuana is “the gift that keeps on
giving....this year, we’ll make $768 million” in revenue for the state
of Washington. This pays for drug education and drug addiction treatment
as well as public education, she said.
Organic pot was just one of a myriad of marijuana-related measures in the bill.
Many
state legislators wanted to vote for only one marijuana-related bill
rather than have to go on the record favoring marijuana several times,
Rivers said. The November 2012 measure to allow recreational marijuana
in Washington passed 56 percent to 44 percent.
While
it is legal for adults to smoke marijuana in Washington, it is not
legal to grow industrial hemp. The new law allows for the study of a
method to allow hemp to be grown and used for industrial purposes.
Last
week, Vermont’s legislature approved a bill to legalize recreational
use of marijuana. Unless the measure is vetoed, Vermont would be the
first state to legalize pot without a public vote.
Voters
have approved legal recreational marijuana use in Colorado, Washington,
Alaska, Oregon, California, Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts and the
District of Columbia.
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