"Liquidation sale," it said. Attached was a spreadsheet of items up for grabs: LED grow lights for $500 apiece. Rotary evaporators for hash oil, $10,000.

Across the Columbia River in Oregon, where the state's top marijuana regulator recently warned of an "existential crisis" in the industry, it's an open secret some licensed growers have funneled product to the out-of-state black market just to stay afloat.

California's "Apple store of weed," MedMen, is teetering with millions in unpaid bills, while the Canadian cannabis company Curaleaf has shuttered most of its cultivation operations in California, Oregon and Colorado.

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In 2013, Joy Hollingsworth moved with her family from Seattle out to the country with a plan to build a cannabis business.

Washington State had recently legalized recreational marijuana, and Barack Obama had just been re-elected. For Ms. Hollingsworth, a former basketball player, and her brother, Raft Hollingsworth III, a former University of Washington student who had been growing medical marijuana, it seemed like as good a time as any to buy a farm and turn a profit.

So began the Hollingsworth Cannabis Company, a Black-owned family business in what has become a very white and increasingly corporate-dominated industry.

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SEATTLE -- Five years after Washington launched its pioneering legal marijuana market, officials are proposing an overhaul of the state's industry rules, with plans for boosting minority ownership of pot businesses, paving the way for home deliveries of medical cannabis and letting the smallest growers increase the size of their operations to become more competitive.

Liquor and Cannabis Board Director Rick Garza detailed the proposals -- part of what the board calls "Cannabis 2.0" -- in an interview with The Associated Press. It's an effort to picture what the legal marijuana market will look like over the next five years, after spending the past five years largely regulating by reaction as the difficulties of building an industry from infancy absorbed the agency's attention.

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Opioid overdoses are killing two people in Washington each day, and Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Tuesday urged legislation that will limit new legal opioid prescriptions and monitor those receiving the drug.

The extent of the state's opioid epidemic was outline in a report released by the AG's office, the Washington State Patrol and the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, detailing its legal and illegal roots.

It urges action on prescription opioids, "often the source of initial exposure to opioids."

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US: Connelly: Lawsuit seeks to block King County vote on safe injection sites - seattlepi.com

Found: Tue Aug 22 14:21:02 2017 PDT Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (WA) Copyright: 2017 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Website: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/408 Author: Joel Connelly

A lawsuit was filed Monday, challenging and seeking to block a public vote on Initiative 27, which seeks to outlaw the opening of supervised consumption spaces, health facilities where people use drugs in a safe environment with access to treatment.

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The growing movement against allowing so-called safe drug injection sites is moving to another city.

The Kent City Council will vote Tuesday night on a proposed moratorium on "community health engagement locations," also called supervised injection facilities.

Renton, Federal Way, Auburn and Bellevue have already passed ordinances banning such sites. The ordinance going before Kent's City Council says there's no evidence that these sites reduce drug addiction.

The Seattle-King County Health Department says someone dies from a heroin or opioid drug overdose every 36 hours in King County. That's more than auto crashes and ranks as the No. 1 cause of preventable death.

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Public health officials are promoting the use of the drug naloxone to help save people from opioid overdoses.

Seattle's opioid crisis is a complicated medical, political and emotional issue, but state leaders are attempting to tackle one of the most immediate concerns facing those on the front line of the fight: Keeping users alive during an overdose.

The Seattle Police Department implemented a nasal naloxone (also known Narcan) program in March 2016, training 60 bike officers to administer the drug to anyone they believed to be suffering from an opioid overdose. The program has been a modest success, with officers reviving 20 people thus far according to Officer Steve Redmond, and there are hopes the program can be expanded department wide.

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Last year, there were 49 cases of kids under the age of 5 accidentally eating treats with marijuana in them.

TACOMA, Wash. - A Tacoma mother says her 14-month-old daughter got sick after eating candy with marijuana in it. And now, she wants to warn other parents.

The woman, who does not want to be identified, said the toddler found the candy at a relative's home without anyone knowing. When she went to pick up her daughter, the girl started acting strangely.

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[photo] Cannabis from Stagecoach Ranch is seen on display during an event at Harvest, a medical marijuana dispensary in the Inner Richmond District, in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday, November 19, 2016.

SACRAMENTO - California lawmakers want to make it easier for marijuana dispensaries to pay their taxes, saying many cash-only businesses are forced to drive long distances with thousands of dollars to make an in-person payment.

That's clearly not safe, said state Sens. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, and Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, who introduced a bill Tuesday to increase the number of places where tax and fee payments can be made in California.

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A bill has been introduced in the state Legislature that would allow marijuana users to grow their own supply at home.

Washington is the only state that allows for retail, recreational marijuana but doesn't also permit cannabis to be grown at home unless by registered medical patients. The new legislation, HB 1092, introduced Wednesday by state Rep. Sherry Appleton, D-Poulsbo, would change that.

If enacted, all adults (21 and over) would be able to grow up to six plants on their private premises so long as the yield is no greater than 24 ounces. Homes with more than one adult would be permitted 12 plants for up to 48 ounces of usable marijuana.

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Marijuana is still illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act. But Washington voters in 2012 legalized the cultivation, sale and taxation of recreational marijuana. California voted in November 2016 to do likewise.

Will taxes on marijuana help pay high cost of K-12 education funding?

The state's Republican lawmakers have been as slippery as a pig on ice when it comes to finding dollars to pay for state Supreme Court-ordered full funding of K-12 education in Washington, a pattern seen Thursday at The Associated Press' legislative forum.

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