Pubdate: Sat, 01 Dec 2012
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2012 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Jonathan Martin
Page: B1

LIQUOR CONTROL BOARD MUST INVENT POT MARKET

Seed to Store

First, a Consultant Must Be Hired, and a Survey Done to Estimate How 
Many Users Exist in the State.

The state Liquor Control Board has an interesting job in the year 
ahead: to get into the weeds of how marijuana is grown, sold and used.

Washington voters' decision to legalize marijuana means the state 
Liquor Control Board (LCB) now has a year to set regulations for the 
first-of-its-kind marijuana market.

But first, the small state agency must go on an even stranger mission 
- - to get into the, well, weeds of how marijuana is grown, sold and used.

At a hearing on Friday before a state Senate committee, Pat Kohler, 
the LCB director, said the agency would need to hire a consultant - a 
pot expert - to gather input from key groups of police, farmers, 
users and others to help her staff better "understand the product and 
the industry itself."

The agency has been getting a lot of advice, said Rick Garza, 
Kohler's deputy. "There's a lot of people who think they have a lot 
of experience in this area," Garza said, prompting laughs from lawmakers.

The voter-approved Initiative 502 requires the LCB to license and 
regulate a seed-to-store closed marijuana market, with the first 
licenses to be issued in late 2013. Based on a state fiscal analysis, 
it will be a big market: 363,000 users consuming 187,000 pounds of 
marijuana each year, with steep sin taxes generating more than $560 
million a year.

Those taxes may eventually pay for regulation, but in the startup 
phase, Kohler said, Gov. Chris Gregoire would ask the Legislature to 
let the LCB tap existing funds to hire 40 new staffers, most of them 
enforcement officers.

Kohler said she'd like more information on how much pot 
Washingtonians use now, because, "Consumption will drive the number 
of stores, and the production."

At the hearing, Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima, asked about the law's 
conflict with federal prohibition of marijuana. Kohler said Gregoire 
planned to talk with federal authorities a second time, but her 
agency was proceeding regardless.

"We're not sure we'll get any direction from the federal government," she said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom