WASHINGTON LEGISLATURE CONSIDERING TWO MARIJUANA BILLS

OLYMPIA -- Washington legislators are spending some of their time on
pot this week, discussing it both as a potential revenue source
through outright legalization, and as an administrative problem
stemming from the medical marijuana law voters approved in 1998.

A day before the state's revenue forecast, supporters of a bill to
legalize cannabis, a term they prefer over marijuana, made a push to
revive a measure they claim would be worth $440 million in a two-year
state budget cycle.

HB 1550 already had one hearing last month in the House Public Safety
Committee, where it attracted the usual list of supporters, who noted
that some of the Founding Fathers grew hemp, and detractors who warned
of growing usage by teens and drivers should marijuana become legal.
That committee has yet to vote the bill up or down, but it was granted
a special "work session" Wednesday in House Ways and Means, the
budget-writing committee, to discuss the money the state might make
from legalizing, taxing and selling marijuana in state liquor stores.

"We're trying to help the Legislature understand the revenue prospects
for the bill," said state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, the
bill's sponsor. States would also save on the costs of arresting,
prosecuting and jailing people for marijuana possession, some
supporters said.

But the bill doesn't take effect until 2013, so the projected revenue
wouldn't help the state's budget problem for the next two years. And
one proponent of legalized marijuana who testified at Wednesday's
hearing said the revenue figure was dubious at best.

John McKay, the former U.S. attorney for Western Washington appointed
by George W. Bush, said the state won't collect that kind of revenue
without imposing such a high tax that people will skip the stores and
grow their own. The cost of law enforcement won't decline for years
because organized crime is unlikely to walk away from their
established operations, he said.

"I question the idea that massive dollars are available to states
initially," McKay said, adding there's also a problem with federal
laws that still classify marijuana as a Schedule 1 illegal drug. "So
long as the federal government continues to criminalize marijuana ...
it will be simultaneously legal and illegal to smoke marijuana."

That conundrum between federal and state law already exists for
medical marijuana, which has its own proposal working through the
Legislature, with somewhat more success.

SB 5073 already passed the Senate. On Monday the House Health
Committee presided over the ongoing debate between law enforcement and
medical marijuana dispensers with a hearing on a proposal to regulate
growers, processors and dispensaries, and to allow patients with a
doctor's recommendation for the drug to volunteer to be on a list that
protects them from arrest.

Under the plan, the state Agriculture Department would license growers
and processors. The Health Department would inspect marijuana and set
up a regulated supply chain that nets the state some money. Those who
don't volunteer for the list of patients could be arrested for
marijuana possession but could still use the defense at trial that it
was for medical purposes.

That bill was criticized by some already in the medical marijuana
dispensary business, who said it would wipe them out. Steve Sarich, of
Seattle-based CannaCare, which operates a dispensary and a clinic,
said the timelines and the requirements for inspections are
unrealistic because the state has no marijuana testing labs and no
private labs test a drug the federal government considers illegal.

The bill requires dispensaries to be nonprofit operations, but the
Internal Revenue Service won't give nonprofit status to an
organization that sells marijuana, Sarich said.

"We need to fix the current legislation, but this has gone too far,"
said Ken Martin, who works with more than two dozen dispensaries in
the Spokane area.

Civil liberties groups objected to the voluntary patient list, saying
the privacy of patients can't be assured, and that if the alternative
is being arrested, it's not really voluntary.