Washington Medical Cannabis Dodges Bullet, for Now

Medical cannabis gets at least a temporary stay of execution in Washington state. A bill that would have, by any effective assessment, essentially dismantled the medical marijuana industry in Washington. House Bill 2149, if it passes, would dramatically reduce the rights that patients currently have. It would severely lower the amount of medicine allowed on hand, it would all but eliminate collective grows. Worst of all, in my opinion, is the requirement that medical marijuana patients would need to register with a state database and obtain a license (as opposed to a doctor’s recommendation). All of this in addition to forcing the medical cannabis patients to get their bud from the state stores. The only benefit given to patients under the new system would be an exemption from the state taxes. To borrow from our British friends, “bollocks!” I’d rather them just leave MMJ alone and charge us the same tax as recreational users. No, it’s not right to tax people on their medicine, but I’d be willing to send a little money to the state to get them to back the fuck off.

All this is about is greed. Lawmakers claim that the MMJ industry is too unregulated and that these suggested regulations are to protect the industry from federal intervention. That is pure bullshit. There were no such claims being made prior to the passage of I-502 and they have been trying to put the MMJ community in a tightly controlled system for more than a decade.

Thankfully, such an unnecessarily draconian measure failed to pass, at least in this congress. It seems, however, that unless some drastic changes are made, it will pass eventually. The reason it failed was due to politicians being unable to decide where the recreational marijuana revenue should go. William Breathes, over at Toke of the Town said it well:

“Politicians are their own worst enemies, and sometimes their inability to get along any better than a bag of wet cats ends up being a good thing. A discussion over where recreational marijuana tax revenue should end up caused the bill to be stalled. Republicans wanted money to go to more city and county governments. The bill had actually passed through the Senate late last week, but was held up in the House on a proposal to give 10 percent of the wholesale tax revenue and 20 percent of the sales tax revenue to municipalities in the state. That was the no-go for House democrats, and the House Republicans say it has to be in the bill for it to pass.”

We can only hope that some rational voices (less driven by avarice) can find a middle ground that give both sides something reasonable. For now, I’m just happy that politicians getting along is a rarity, and that discord is giving the patient side of this equation some time to wage a better defense.