Pubdate: Sun, 25 Jan 2015
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2015 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Kristy Fox
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v15/n045/a02.html

Marijuana

LIQUOR CONTROL BOARD NEEDS TO CLEAN UP ITS ACT

Chris Marr, what have you been smoking? "Regulating medical 
marijuana" would be comical if it did not come from a member of the 
Washington State Liquor Control Board, the entity responsible for the 
muddle known as recreational marijuana ["Medical-marijuana patients 
deserve a regulated system that is safe and affordable," Opinion, Jan. 19].

"Highly trained individuals who are knowledgeable about existing 
research" staffing a storefront dispensary? That kind of 
pie-in-the-sky wish-mongering created a recreational system catering 
mostly to tourists - locals can't or won't pay for the outsized tax 
and regulatory burdens the state and the Liquor Control Board imposed 
on the recreational industry.

Few licensed stores have opened, thanks in no small part to the 
Liquor Control Board's lottery scheme for awarding retail licenses, a 
Kafkaesque system that gave retail licenses to the lucky, whether 
capable or not. This effectively barred experienced medical-marijuana 
dispensary owners and prohibits growers from owning retail outlets. 
Now, after only one licensed growing season, there's a pot glut: 
licensed growers with no licensed retailers buying their crops.

The Liquor Control Board should clean up their mess before they make 
a fiasco out of medical marijuana, too.

By the way, "large home grows" do not create explosion hazards. 
Manufacturing hash oil does. Should we give even more power to a 
Liquor Control Board that still doesn't understand what it is regulating?

Kristy Fox, Issaquah
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom