As a result of this year’s failed legislative attempts to force medical cannabis patients into the recreational marijuana system created by legalization measure I-502, attentive observers were given a window into how things are done at the Capitol. It wasn’t reassuring.This unimpressive display of lawmakers who are almost entirely clueless when it comes to medical marijuana was particularly distressing given that cannabis has been legal in this state for almost 16 years now for medicinal purposes; you’d think legislators would have bothered to educate themselves on such a volatile and evolving issue.
Making the level of marijuana ignorance in Olympia particularly mystifying is the fact that we are being told there is a “crisis” around the medical marijuana system in this state, and that federal raids are supposedly imminent if lawmakers don’t destroy … I mean “regulate” medical marijuana so that it’s practically indistinguishable from the recreational market. Oh, and entirely coincidentally I’m sure, regulate it so that all those profits that are currently flowing through mom-and-pop dispensaries instead go to heavily taxed 502 stores. State government gets a bigger cut that way, doncha know.
In any event, if there were, indeed, a “medical marijuana crisis” rather than the sort of manufactured hysteria which almost always precedes bad legislation, you can bet that these self-serving blowhards who have been endlessly bleating about the “untaxed, unregulated medical marijuana businesses” would have actually educated themselves on the ins and outs of the market, instead of just memorizing a few handy catch phrases.
The last hope of state politicians (and I-502 profiteers) at “folding in” medical marijuana to the 502 system—SB 5887—appears to have died not with a bang but with a whimper last night, as the 2014 session came to a close. Several lawmakers late on Thursday said the House bill already covered here, HB 2149, had “little to no chance of passing” out of the House, and, in a richly ironic and comically symbolic dust-up, SB 5887 appears to have stalled in the Senate on Thursday due to a fight over money.
Sen. Ann Rivers, a La Center Republican who sponsored SB 5887, said that measure is dead because of “immovable positions” on an issue concerning what should be done with tax revenue from the new recreational marijuana market. While the bill passed the Senate 34-15 on Saturday, Wenatchee Republican Rep. Cary Condotta drafted an amendment which would appropriate 10 percent of recreational marijuana tax revenue between growers and processors, and 20 percent of revenue from taxes between retailers and consumers, to local governments.
I-502 imposed a 25 percent excise tax on each of the three levels of distribution in the recreational system: producer to processor; processor to retailer; and retailer to consumer. Rep. Condotta’s amendment, to divert part of those funds to local governments, was meant to motivate counties to lift bans on recreational marijuana by dangling cash in front of them.
The Democratic caucus refused to support Condotta’s change, and Condotta said Republicans would not support 5887 without his amendment. That leaves Washington’s medical cannabis program comparatively unregulated even as the state rolls out its heavily taxed and regulated recreational marijuana program.
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