Washington State: We need help sorting out rules for pot industry
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - State officials tasked with developing a legal marijuana industry in Washington state have a problem: There's no similar system anywhere in the world that they can look to for guidance.
The state's Liquor Control Board also says it has little insight into the basics of pot cultivation, such as how the marijuana should be grown, how much acreage the state will need to develop sufficient supply, how it should be processed or how it should be sold at the retail level.
They are looking to solicit bids from experts from around the country while at the same time taking a lot of unsolicited phone calls from those who want help.
"There are a lot of people who think they have a lot of expertise in this area," said Rick Garza, deputy director of the Liquor Control Board, during a state Senate hearing Friday.
State leaders are moving ahead with developing the system even as they await word of whether the federal government will oppose it. Several state agencies have been forming teams that will look at issues such as licensing, legal matters, enforcement and education.
Alison Holcomb, the drug policy director for the ACLU of Washington State who led efforts to pass the marijuana legalization initiative, said the goal of the measure was to make the marijuana retail outlets similar to the recently disbanded state-run liquor stores. She says they would be very controlled, very boring retail outlets with limited signage.
Holcomb said they don't envision state employees selling the marijuana, however, as they want individuals to volunteer to lead the shops since there is still uncertainty over how the federal government will respond.
"They do still risk arrest and prosecution under federal law," Holcomb said.
Garza said they knew from the beginning that Washington would be creating a system that would be unprecedented in the U.S., so officials started looking internationally for guidance.
They didn't find much help there, either.
Even countries that are friendly to marijuana users hadn't really gone beyond decriminalization, so Washington will be pioneering with its regulated system.
Possession of marijuana will be legal in Washington state next Thursday, but the process of buying and selling won't be in place for probably another year or so. State financial experts estimate it could raise nearly $2 billion in tax revenue over the next five years.
Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, urged state officials to move quickly on developing the system - perhaps faster than its original timeline. He expressed concern that drug gangs would take over the market and entrench themselves before the state has a chance to get organized.
"The more time that goes on, the more we're asking for trouble," Kline said.
The state's Liquor Control Board also says it has little insight into the basics of pot cultivation, such as how the marijuana should be grown, how much acreage the state will need to develop sufficient supply, how it should be processed or how it should be sold at the retail level.
They are looking to solicit bids from experts from around the country while at the same time taking a lot of unsolicited phone calls from those who want help.
"There are a lot of people who think they have a lot of expertise in this area," said Rick Garza, deputy director of the Liquor Control Board, during a state Senate hearing Friday.
State leaders are moving ahead with developing the system even as they await word of whether the federal government will oppose it. Several state agencies have been forming teams that will look at issues such as licensing, legal matters, enforcement and education.
Alison Holcomb, the drug policy director for the ACLU of Washington State who led efforts to pass the marijuana legalization initiative, said the goal of the measure was to make the marijuana retail outlets similar to the recently disbanded state-run liquor stores. She says they would be very controlled, very boring retail outlets with limited signage.
Holcomb said they don't envision state employees selling the marijuana, however, as they want individuals to volunteer to lead the shops since there is still uncertainty over how the federal government will respond.
"They do still risk arrest and prosecution under federal law," Holcomb said.
Garza said they knew from the beginning that Washington would be creating a system that would be unprecedented in the U.S., so officials started looking internationally for guidance.
They didn't find much help there, either.
Even countries that are friendly to marijuana users hadn't really gone beyond decriminalization, so Washington will be pioneering with its regulated system.
Possession of marijuana will be legal in Washington state next Thursday, but the process of buying and selling won't be in place for probably another year or so. State financial experts estimate it could raise nearly $2 billion in tax revenue over the next five years.
Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, urged state officials to move quickly on developing the system - perhaps faster than its original timeline. He expressed concern that drug gangs would take over the market and entrench themselves before the state has a chance to get organized.
"The more time that goes on, the more we're asking for trouble," Kline said.
It sounds like the rules are more a product of nanny-state taxation bureaucracy and the sort of thing conservatives are supposed to hate, rather than a matter of liberty. You can't just legalize it and tax the commercial sale of it the way you might tax lettuce or cotton. Rather, it needs to be a giant, expensive clusterf--k of hand-wringing political bureaucracy at the expense of taxpayers who simultaneously hate government control of small business and want to establish more of it. Way to go.
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"Drug gangs." LOL! People are going to grow it, and they're going to sell it to their friends and relatives the way it's always done. You're as likely to find them doing it in Cottage Grove or Bend as you are in Olympia. Making it legal just means they don't have to worry about going to jail for hooking their friends up with weed, and all the rest of this is just political bedwetting. The best and cheapest way to make drug gangs go the hell back to Mexico is to encourage people to grow their own, but a conservative political candidate who dares say such a thing still has to wait a few years before the "second-hand-smoke-isn't-bad-for-kid" crowd dies the hell off and shuts the hell up. Washington wants a "regulated system" for controlling people who grow a native plant in their garage. Why don't they regulate garden tomatoes while they're at it? I have a walnut tree they better come regulate.
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Washington: Grow your own pot. Stay home on Friday night. Watch a movie, listen to Dark Side of the Moon and Wizard of Oz, bake some cookies, order a pizza, play some games. Don't drive. And a few more pushups and a few less french fries wouldn't hurt you either.
Spark up the doobie and pass it around. No problem. Just make sure you have Domino's pizza on speed dial.    ; > )
Why not study the process used in Amsterdam?
did anyone pay attention that the dui reg on this is 5 nano grams my work allows 33 nano-grams and for the most part everyone who has been tested has failed at my job if they partake in this drug. marijuana stores in your fat cells so a person can smoke some and if they have excessive fat and get pulled over for a possible dui this will give a false reading. think about it this way you go have a drink at a friends and three days later you get pulled over and fail a bac test for being over the alcohol limit. this is a stupid law marijuana has one place and that is not to be sold to the public and not to be controlled by the state. this law has more than 1 snake in it it is loaded with bad agendas. can not wait to move to a conservative state
 @freedom123 "can not wait to move to a conservative state"
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Some conservatives want you to have freedom as long as it's the kind of freedom they want you to have. That's actually just RINO nanny-statism in disguise. You're basically saying people can be falsely-accused of being high, so even though it's illegal and people already get high, being illegal works. How's that working?
The reason marijuana was prohibited in the 20th century was to suppress hemp fuel and fiber production, which is inexpensive to make and naturally decentralized, so that small groups of people could profit from the capital intensive petrochemical alternatives that dominate our political process and economy today. Hemp will decentralize our economic system and return wealth and control to the majority. Hemp & marijuana both come from the same plant, cannabis sativa, which is the Latin, botanical name. Hemp, according to the law in the USA, is the fiber from the stalks and stems and the sterile seeds, while marijuana is the leaves, flowers and viable seeds. Some people believe that hemp with a low THC content is one species, and that it becomes a different plant, marijuana, when the THC level in the cannabis plant goes above 0.3 percent, but it is really the same plant. It is really about fuel, fiber and the synthetic subversion of the natural cycle. Drugs are only a smokescreen. Marijuana prohibition has always been about money, power, and control. Restore hemp! - www.hemp.org
 @Jimmy Tee Plus it makes the white wimmins NAWTY, mmm-hmm. I remember watched Reefer Madness in college...the part where the sorority girl gets high and falls out the upstairs window, and later where they all went skinny dipping and drown. What Reefer Madness needed was a nude scene...
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That summer, I watched some drunk-ass biker drop his kid off the top of a ledge over the Calipooia River and when we fished the boy out, you could see his brains through a hole in his head. In court, everybody talked about what a great guy the dad was but they'd been throwing their empty beer cans in the river. The night I saw Reefer Madness I drank a fifth of Jack Daniel with some girl named Liz and got the spins, and some opera guy who ended up being my boss a few years later was singing Carmina Burana, and Liz and I spent the morning singing and throwing up in a public men's room at Oregon State University. No idea whatever happened to her. Lovely voice. We're lucky we lived.
NOW you are thinking of all that regulation, after this went to the ballots and was voted in?Â
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Hello???? McFly?????
Let them figure it out! It's not anybody's problem but their own.
Washington, just use Google, it is your Friend.
A state full of pot addicts. Â Â Sad.
 @sortbait Alcohol is legal. Does that make everyone a drunk? Tobacco is legal. Does that make everyone a smoker? You have got to be kidding me...
 @MamaBear  @sortbait He's not kidding you. He's serious.
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The artesians must have really made his skin crawl. Buncha five-legged drunks.
 @sortbait Would that be a sad state, or a sad State?
Washington law makers need a higher education.
http://www.marijuanacollege.com/index.php/locations/oregon-colleges
they can sort it out, starting by sharing with me
"Washington State: We need help sorting out rules for pot industry"Â Â Â Just smoke a doobie and it'll come to ya.
Legalization is the greatest thing to happen to our country, and probably the world! Thanks to these two states(Washington and Colorado) the world can exhale a sigh of relief.   Maybe the drug cartels in Mexico will lose some ground by just 2 states legalizing.
 I am just as curious if Hemp will now be grown in the U.S.A. as I am about the Pot legalization. This could create a renewed(Hemp used to be grown all over the country) industry that creates jobs, Oxygen, and might save some trees in the process.Â
 According to Wiki, China is the biggest producer of Hemp and the U.S. is the biggest importer(not specifically from China). If we grew it, there's one way to lower our deficit, maybe Pot will get us off that Fiscal Cliff I keep hearing about.
 Viva la Marijuana!
After the years of badgering the officials and the countless nauseating excuses , washington finally breaks down to this hoax. Perhaps preventive health care means nothing. Obviously its easier to swallow a lie then actually put down the garbage you eat that doesn't qualify as food in fact. Making Excuses because you dont care to for your own body properly and now it seems  most have issues of some kind and default to stupidity pot brain . I can hear the lies now, "I got a back pain of some kind YADA YADA YADA". Or, "its been proven to WHATEVER" help cancer or  dot dot dot". Ya, well food grade hydrogen peroxide kills cancer cells dead! Well long proven! What about ALL you excuses now? Oh I see, your bad back injuries ETC ETC, Right? Ya well the two major issues I experienced are well taken care of with simple exercise, try it some time. Oh OK, I see now, Glaucoma on the eyes? So, try fasting and detoxing sometime, your eyes are polluted and body toxic, its called advanced "floaters" buildup, The medical community lies to you and rathetr you eat DRUGS to finance them instead of telling you the resolutiions of things. "Sleepless in seattle" now it's  "STUPID on pot"!!! Happy now with your excuses? Keep lying to yourself potheads. You have never changed have you???
 @Zechariah ...It appears to be some sort of coded message.
 ...didn't have any Adderall so I took another rip...kaff, KAFF!!!
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'Perhaps preventive health care means nothing.'
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I've been smoking the stuff for over 30 years and still run and workout everyday. I'm healthier because I made a point to cut down on sugar, starting with alcohol.Â
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I don't abuse it. I love to play guitar and a toke is all I need to open the creativity faucet. The people who have to smoke it morning, noon and night...without a medical cause...the true potheads with no goals but to spark another...is where the stigma arises.  Like alcohol...people need to learn how to 'partake' responsibly.
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"Obviously its easier to swallow a lie"
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One of the goals of legalization was to take the money out of the black market. Since MJ is not on the legal market at this time....don't you think it's too soon to tell if the voters have 'swallowed a lie'?
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"Excuses because you dont care to for your own body"
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Unless you're willing to pay for my medical bills, what business is it of yours how I take care of my body?
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"Ya, well food grade hydrogen peroxide kills cancer cells dead!"
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Too bad nobody told Steve Jobs about it.
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"Oh I see, your bad back injuries ETC ETC, Right?"
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When it's legal, people won't need an excuse.
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"your eyes are polluted and body toxic, its called advanced "floaters" buildup"
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lol...constipated eyes...;)
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"The medical community lies to you and rathetr you eat DRUGS to finance them instead of telling you the resolutiions of things."
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I gotta agree...there are certain diets that can create an environment in the body where cancer cells thrive, but the AMA will never tell you this. They would rather put you under chemo and a host of pill than prescribe a healthy diet that strengthens the immune system.
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""Sleepless in seattle"
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No, now police can focus on the real criminals...'Sleeping peacefully in Seattle'Â
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 "STUPID on pot"!!!
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Some of the richest, most successful people on the planet have smoked it. If God put it on this earth and said it was good...why are you making it out to be so bad?
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I am now just realizing, society had hit a KaChink-a in its deteriorating  spiral.Â
Normalized now of everything that was once commonly realized as corrosive for obvious reasons. So legalizing any of the things once known as such, will somehow make its dynamic different?
You couldn't have made a bigger lie to yourself.
Nothin like calling bad good and good bad .Â
Hate to say this but the deep heavy rumble footsteps of the creature that it eating your ppl's mnds up is like the low tone of a Sub-subwoofer echo at omnimax.Â
And you can't even tell it.
Society has taken a turn for the worst!
That's ok though. I was shown this would occur . years ago...
@Zechariah I've seen random sentence generators that are able to string together a clearer thought than that. .
 @Zechariah I do not wish pain on anyone.  Nor do I discredit an individual for seeking relief from it.  Marijuana has little to do with a person's intelligence.  However, the willingness to learn plays a much bigger role in a person's level of intelligence.  Those who don't appreciate knowledge or the desire to better ones self fit your description well.  But Marijuana smokers?  Not likely.  Â
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Now alcohol? that is a very different story. Â Never met a drunk who had brains, Â Nor reguard for the safety of others. Hence why it kills so much. In a society where the populace continues to be more hostile towards each other and crime continues to mount, most would be happy to deal with a happier and more mellow populace. Not to mention the revenue that can save basic services due to the incompetence of our elected officals.
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Passing judgement like you are accomplishes nothing. Â Just fuels more hate and highlights your ignorance. Â At least use proper grammar if you intend to slam the intelligence of others.
 @Zechariah I don't use marijuana myself, but I imagine that the only people who would be able to make any sense out of what you typed would have to be high on the stuff. I know that you probably thought that you had a solid point, but you left that part out.
 @JTesla  @Zechariah No, not really. I even 'took one for the team' and smoked another bowl, and it still doesn't make any more sense. Some people'd be more coherent if they toked up I bet.
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(Or would that be 'toke one for the team'?)
 @brendan  @JTesla  @Zechariah  'toke one for the team' I like it!
 @JTesla  @Zechariah " but I imagine that the only people who would be able to make any sense out of what you typed", Really? You ppl are too far gone to "get the hint" as said. Life is too big it appears to delve into as to why some things like potheads excuses exist and God forbid we should think about things before we voters say we wanted it. I expect you to Not get it...... Again. Stay asleep.Â
 @Zechariah You're still not making any sense. When people, ppl if you don't understand that word, consistently tell you that you are not making sense, perhaps you should get the hint and work on making your posts a little more comprehendible. Let me know if the words I'm using are too big for you and I'll try to take it down a notch.
 @JTesla  @Zechariah I tried both ways, and still couldn't pull a point from that garbled mess... Guess he didn't get the memo that this is a 'recreational' legalization, not medicinal.
 @Lips  @JTesla Yes it appears nobody can operate in that once existed earlier in recent times called "get the hint". If you cant pick out the obvious points of messages then you're the perfect description of someone who is "Willfully Ignorant". Who cares about the right thing about life anymore? Right?  Lets all be retarded fools on drugs and make excuses about it, and maybe make a few thousand dollars selling some of what we grow, while we are at it HUH???
Let's justify being a pothead and maybe if we vote on it it will be law. OH wait, it is ...now.
 @JTesla I'm high and I couldn't make any sense out of it. Maybe if I had some Adderall...
There does not need to be a "system". It grows in dirt...
 @MamaBear And hydroponically as well.Â
 @MamaBear And tends to grow in spite of anything you do to it as well.