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.
