How Inequitable Access to Medical Cannabis Leads to Negative outcomes with Law Enforcement

A look at regulations in Washington State that put medical cannabis patients between law enforcement and the cannabis plant.

 

By: Lukas Barfield (From the 2020 Cannabis Summit held on September 25, 2020)

 

Hello Everyone,

           I hope everyone is well in these crazy times.  Before I get started, I want to thank the Cannabis Alliance (CA). They worked really hard to make sure the platform we're using was/is blind accessible and that I was able to access it. I also want to thank them for being strong advocates for medical cannabis in Washington State and beyond. The CA emerged at a time when the two cannabis systems in WA were being merged. They understood the new system was coming at the detriment of patients and several groups came together to start the Alliance. Their strong footprint in the medical cannabis sector shows and patients in WA are better off because of the Cannabis Alliance.

      Today I want to talk about how inequitable access to medical cannabis Leads to negative outcomes with law enforcement" in Washington.   We hear a lot, justifiably, about how the lack of access to medical cannabis effects patient's health, but there's some other consequences to having spotty medical cannabis access. We first need to define some terms. "Inequitable access" can be defined as, your access to cannabis depends on where you live, your insurance status, what disability you have, and your socio-economic level. And, we all know these issues affect the POC community more than others.  There are Three types of patients in Washington: Qualified patients who have been referred by their doctor to consume medical cannabis, Registered patients who are qualified patients on the state's "Marijuana Authorization Database”, and then, there are the patients who use cannabis as medicine, but don't' consult doctors to do so. With registry numbers in the tank, it's believed there are less than ten thousand people on the registry, The third group is clearly the largest in the state. These three groups have varying possession limits, growing rights and different degrees of access to medical cannabis. Law enforcement is everyone from police to probation officers.  Let's first look at some different access spaces and some of the challenges face by patients.  

     I know it's hard, but imagine medical cannabis access residing in three large warehouses. I know giant warehouses of cannabis, "I know it's a stretch."  If you have some paper, you can draw three squares to represent these access spaces. Warehouse 1 is the stores, Warehouse 2 is patients growing for themselves, and warehouse 3 is the ultimate access, owning a cannabis business. Each warehouse has only one door in. Let's look first at warehouse 1 and some of its access issues. 

Warehouse 1 - Stores

     Retail cannabis stores should be the first and easiest access point for medical cannabis patients. If patients can make it to the store, many patients don't/can't drive, we are then faced with a myriad of access issues. One of the first is price. Washington is the only state in the country that taxes medical cannabis. At 37%, this is also one of the highest adult use excise taxes in the country.  High quality cannabis is $40 + an 1/8. That is a lot of money to someone on Social Security.  The higher prices prompt patients to look for cheaper selections, but this becomes our second barrier, general confusion and unreliability when it comes to selection. Washington has a very small "medical cannabis" portfolio, and I've found if you don't watch out you can really come away with some bad product.   The next barrier for accessing the store is hygiene, or rather the lack thereof. The LCB doesn't require mold, heavy metal, or pesticide testing. Patients know this, and many are hesitant to access the stores at all. Another is not being able to smell or more closely scrutinize cannabis before purchase.  There are other issues like registry security, perceived lack of cannabis knowledge at the stores, and purchase amounts that keep patients from accessing medical cannabis in Washington retail stores.  

Warehouse 2 - Patients Providing for Themselves  

      In 1998 Washington voted on I-692, which basically opened it up for patients to grow their own medical cannabis. Over the years the state would attempt to regulate the practice, and by 2011  a loose regulatory structure emerged. 2012 saw the passage of I-502 (adult use), and by 2015 SB 5052, "The Cannabis Patient Protection Act," had merged medical and adult use cannabis. 5052 took a loose assortment of laws that allowed patients to grow 15 plants individually and far more on a collective basis, and scrapped them in favor of a draconian grow scheme that only allows four plants for qualified patients and six, with an option for fifteen for registered patients. One of the most efficient cultivation models in the world (Uruguay and Spain both use a "co-op" model to distribute cannabis) was snatched right out from under Washington patients in 2015. Did all those people suddenly stop growing?  Many did, but others did not.  5052 turned a large portion of WA patients into criminals overnight.

Warehouse 3 - Ownership

      Back at the beginning of 2015, SB 5052 was just introduced, a fellow activist and I went to a cannabis farmers market in Tacoma. I had not, and still haven't seen anything like what awaited me. There were venders from the POC community, men, women, old, young and people with disabilities offering their cannabis flower, concoctions and cultivars. It was amazing, but my wonder was short lived. 5052 left all those people out by outlawing the markets and countless medical cannabis entrepreneurs.  Many of them, who were patients themselves, went underground or out of business. Some were arrested later when the market was shut down.  At the moment, The LCB isn't issuing licenses, and even if you could get one, it costs a half a million dollars to open a proper cannabis business. The legislature passed a cannabis social equity bill and formed a "Social Equity in Marijuana Task Force", but the WSLCB is stalling issuing guidance and licenses. Like the other two "warehouses", the lack of access to this building is driving people right into a fourth warehouse, the underground market. This puts people right where we don't want them, between law enforcement and the cannabis plant.  

Arrests in a Legal State?      

Multiple studies show cannabis arrests went down significantly after legalization, but problems still persist. There are still RCWs on the books that allow police to interfere in your life over small amounts of cannabis.   I did a FOI request in July for Tacoma "marijuana" arrests, and there were 52 people charged with a cannabis crime in Tacoma in 2019. Most look to be possession.  A report in 2018 looked at several sources of compiled data.  The Washington Office of Financial Management filed a report that found cannabis "incidents" dropped in WA, but the types of crimes remained the same, with possession taking the top slot for arrests at 90%.  In 1999, people were charged with possession in WA, and in 2015 three years after I-502 and 17 years after Washington's original medical cannabis initiative. The report also found legal cannabis sales in a county did not correlate with lower arrest rates in that county. This is the same study that found African Americans were 2.7 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis than whites, despite an overall drop in arrests.  Unfortunately, we don't have relevant data on these arrests, so it's hard to say how many use cannabis as medicine, but with large numbers of Americans facing ongoing health issues, 1 in 4 having a diagnosed disability. Washington has such dismal registration numbers; it makes sense to say that many people arrested for cannabis in Washington are medical cannabis patients. Furthermore, there are reports of registered patients being arrested.   These interactions with police are unpredictable at best, and lead to some of our most vulnerable citizens in harm's way.   

Some Simple Solutions

       I just don't want to be all negative. The I-502 system does have a lot to offer patients and arrest rates dropping is a good thing. Our three warehouses are fixable. We have a good work crew to make the repairs, but can we muster the political will to push the legislature to make some changes?     Some solutions that I see to these problems are: lowering the 37% excise tax for registered patients, increasing the plant count for "qualified" patients from 4 to 6, and increasing access to seeds and clones for patients. This is only a fix for Warehouse 1 and 2. Retro fitting warehouse 3 by opening licenses is a much larger discussion, but following through on Washington's social equity promises would be a good start. Farmers markets, farm to patient purchasing, and increasing patient co-ops are some other solutions that would open up Washington's cannabis industry to more people.   

      By expanding access to medical cannabis in Washington, the state can begin to fulfill the promises of I-692 and I-502. Both of which are intended to chip away at cannabis' illegality. SB 5052 is called the "Cannabis Patient Protection Act." Let's actually protect patients in Washington, not from negative health outcomes, but from law enforcement.  These fixes won't be easy, but with the help of groups like the Cannabis Alliance and others medical cannabis will get better in Washington.