Pubdate: Wed, 19 Jun 2013
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2013 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Bruce Ramsey
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1896/a08.html

IT'S BEEN A LONG, STRANGE TRIP

Muraco Kyashna-Tocha started the Green Buddha marijuana dispensary in 
an unlabeled Seattle storefront in 2008. In 2009, she applied for a 
business license. In 2010, she began paying taxes and, in 2012, she 
passed a tax audit.

She says, "And I expect to shut in April 2014" when the stores for 
the public are open for business.

Cannabis is a new industry. Change is organic, not predictable and not over.

Green Buddha is a collective, a counterculture of volunteers. The 
early dispensaries were of that sort; they didn't have to be 
efficient and mostly weren't. The later places were proprietorships, 
and more businesslike.

"Hippies don't make good business people," Kyashna--Tocha says, with 
a chuckle. The next step, she suggests, will be the Initiative 502 
stores sweeping the dispensaries away. Since last November, she says, 
wholesale prices on Craigslist have dropped 25 percent.

I compare what has happened to a King County Bar Association 
conference in December 2005 called "Exit Strategy for the War on 
Drugs." The talk there was for legal marijuana with no brand names, 
no promotion and no private sale. Organizer Roger Goodman (now a 
state representative, D-Kirkland) said he thought it had been a 
mistake after Prohibition to allow branded alcoholic drinks.

Jeff Haley of the Drug Policy Foundation of Washington suggested that 
cannabis be sold by state employees. In a show of hands, 
three-quarters of the attendees supported "profit controls."

That was the vision, but how to achieve it? Only one state legislator 
attended the conference, uberliberal Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle.

Things changed. In 2010, a group called Sensible Washington almost 
collected enough signatures for a statewide initiative to repeal all 
marijuana laws for those over 18. In California, a legalization 
measure took 46 percent of the statewide vote. Dispensaries began 
coming into the open, first in California and then here.

In January 2011, Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, introduced a 
bill to license private growers for the medical market. In February, 
The Seattle Times came out for adult legalization.

"In the spring of 2011 it was as if a toggle switch had flipped," 
says Alison Holcomb of the American Civil Liberties Union of 
Washington. "The debate had turned from 'whether' to 'when.' "

That summer, Gov. Chris Gregoire vetoed most of Kohl-Welles' bill 
because of a federal threat to arrest state employees. Reformers took 
the message: Bypass the Legislature. Use the initiative process, but 
propose a setup that would be politically defensible.

Under Initiative 502, the state would regulate product quality, 
labels, signs, store windows and the minimum age of customers. But 
cannabis would be privately grown and sold. Holcomb led the fight for 
502, which was approved in 2012 by 55.7 percent of voters.

The political balance changed. Our Democratic governor and attorney 
general, who had been against 502 as candidates, began to defend it.

A new industry opens. The old-timers, who think of it as theirs, want 
to stay in. Says Seattle attorney Hilary Bricken of Harris & Moure, 
"I hope they have an appetite for regulation."

Change continues. Will "Big Marijuana" take over? (That may be a 
problem for the Obama administration.) Will the rule against stores 
within 1,000 feet of schools, playgrounds, etc., hold? (It's a 
problem in Seattle.) Will the DUI limit of 5 nanograms of THC per 
milliliter of whole blood work out? (Colorado has adopted a version 
of it.) Should Washington promote marijuana tourism?

Colorado is. Bricken noted that Denver is making much of its moniker, 
"The Mile High City." Hey. We're the Evergreen State. "These names," 
she said. "It's like somebody knew."

But they didn't. Nobody knew.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom