A measure that would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana in Washington state has enough certified signatures to go to the Legislature for consideration, Secretary of State Sam Reed announced today.

Initiative 502 would allow people over the age of 21 to buy marijuana at stores regulated by the state Liquor Control Board. People could buy up to an ounce at a time, and it would also set a new standard for driving while under the influence of marijuana. You can read the full text here.

Sponsors of the marijuana measure submitted 354,608 signatures — far more than what’s required for a statewide proposition. Lawmakers can pass the measure, or reject it and let it go to the November ballot for voters to decide.

Earlier today, the Senate heard a bill that aims to give cities and counties more control over how they can regulate medical marijuana.

Tags: legalization, marijuana, Secretary of State, tax

Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson is holding a press conference to talk about legalizing marijuana. She is joined by Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, political activists and other supporters.

Dickerson is sponsoring a bill to legalize, regulate and tax cannabis.

“In these trying times, $440 million in new revenue should definitely be of interest to the legislature,” she said, referring to the amount that she believes the state will make from taxing the sale of marijuana during the next budget cycle. She says the majority of the money collected would help fund social services, which are facing deep cuts.

“I approach the topic from a slightly different prospective,” said Seattle City Council-member Tim Burgess. He said that this bill would allow the country to discontinue mass incarceration of people facing cannabis charges.

Holmes said that the time has come to have a responsible conversation about regulating and taxing the substance.

Also present to speak in favor of Dickerson’s bill was Jodie Emery, whose husband is serving a 5-year sentence. She and her husband own a business that sells hemp-products.

Dickerson said that states need to step up and lead the charge to end the prohibition of marijuana.

“This is an attempt to try to help the legislators understand the revenue possibilities of this bill — they are very significant,” she said, when asked about her reasoning for holding a press conference when it appears that her bill is dead. A work session on the topic is scheduled for the House Ways and Means committee today at 3:30.

“Al Capone was no longer in the beer business when the prohibition went down,” said George Rohrbacher, a former state senator.

Holmes said that prohibition has driven control of  marijuana into the black market. “We are certainly not advocating the use of it,” he said. Holmes said legalizing marijuana is a civil liberties and economic issue.

“Alcohol is legal. Alcohol is taxed,” said a representative of the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Those selling moonshine represent less than 1 percent of the market, he said. When the government comes in and taxes, he said, they gain control of the substance.

Tags: marijuana

Marijuana legalization is a much sexier headline than something about the the state’s budget process as lawmakers move toward sine die.  So, I’ll get to pot talk later in this post.  But yesterday was policy cutoff for the legislature, and The Impact crew was set up  between House and Senate chambers for the entire day, conducting 27 interviews with the governor and key lawmakers on the budget, education, health care, jobs, and yes – marijuana. Here are some of my takeaways:

Look for the budget chairs to roll out their proposals on March 21 or 22 - the Monday or Tuesday after the March 17th revenue forecast. Rep. Ross Hunter, D-Medina, said he’s expecting a $500 million to $1.5 billion drop in revenue projections and has some contingency plans ready to go.  He also said the budget proposal will include plans to close the shortfall for the budget ending in June, as well as the next two-year budget cycle.

The governor’s budget director, Marty Brown, has both state and federal budget cuts on his mind.  He’s watching for $200 million to $700 million in federal cuts that would mostly impact social services. Brown said “it’s really hard to tell when they’re sort of passing things in two week increments right now.”  Congress has until October to finalize their budget proposals. (more…)

Tags: Budget, marijuana, The Impact

The Q&A this week is with Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, who stepped away from a Ways and Means Committee meeting to speak with me about some of her bills, including one to allow police to tape conversations between pimps and child prostitutes.

Q: How did the bill to allow taped conversations come about?

Dickerson: It came about when one of the advocates who works on the issue of trafficking came to me and she knew about my history of working on issues involving children who’ve been prostituted and she asked me to do this bill. There’s a companion bill in the Senate as well.

Q: What would the bill do?

Dickerson: The bill would allow taped conversations of the child and the suspected pimp. And one of the things that we were looking at was, hmm, do we need to add language in there that would let the child know that there’s some risk involved in doing this? We don’t have a victim witness program in Washington state. The federal government does, but the state doesn’t. So unless these were cases in federal court, the child couldn’t count on any kind of victim witness program. They certainly could count on confidentiality but we thought it was important to make sure that the child knows that there’s some risk. So I’ve been working with Rep. Ladenburg on an amendment.

Q: What would the amendment do?

Dickerson:It has a provision inserted that would explain the fact that there are risks.

I’m in favor of adding a bit more language to safeguard – to make sure that the child knows what they’re getting into in terms of the taping, because there are risks involved. It appears that in a case that was highlighted in the press just about a month ago, a young woman who testified against her pimp suddenly disappeared and hasn’t been heard of. So I think that we do need to be careful.

Q: What do you say to those – like the ACLU – that have civil liberty concerns about taping phone conversations without consent?

Dickerson: I don’t think there should be a big concern there. There is review by judges and if we find that police are abusing this authority we can always make more stringent requirements.

Q: Tell me more about the magnitude of the problem in Washington.Why is this bill needed?

Dickerson: There seems to be a real epidemic of children being prostituted in Washington state. We’re in the very sad state of affairs. There was a study that was done recently that identified over 500 children who were involved in prostitution in King County. (more…)

Tags: child prostitution, Dickerson, marijuana

The House Public Safety Committee is just starting a hearing on a bill to sell marijuana in liquor stores. You can watch live right here.

The bill would license cannabis farmers, create a 15 percent  tax on the sale of marijuana, allow adults 21 and over to use marijuana and would allow marijuana gardening.

Rep. Chris Hurst began the hearing by noting that last year’s hearing on marijuana was packed. This year, he said, they reserved a larger hearing room — and he said he’s surprised that there aren’t many people there to testify.

Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson says people might wonder why a 64-year-old grandmother would want to legalize marijuana. “I’ve come to this position not because I use cannabis myself,” she said, but because of the harm she’s seen from prohibition. That includes people who’ve been caught with marijuana who will have a criminal record for life. “It’s harmful in terms of the huge waste that it causes to the General Fund of Washington,” she said. The amount: She says $25 million is spent per year on jailing people who use marijuana.

On the other hand, legalizing and taxing marijuana would net $400 million per budget cycle, she said. She said her bill also legalizes the production of hemp, “which would provide an enormous economic opportunity.”

Rep. Roger Goodman, also a sponsor, said prohibition never works. He said prohibition doesn’t address demand — it drives the market underground, where it’s more dangerous.

“We grew up with cannabis. We have to grow up about it now,” he said. “Prohibitions don’t work, regulation does.” (more…)

Tags: marijuana

Tags: Chris Hurst, marijuana

This week’s Q&A is with House Minority Leader Richard DeBolt and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown. I’ve posted the interview in the order in which they were conducted, as usual, asked each the same broad questions, and included everything each lawmaker said. The conversations cover marijuana, public safety bills, taxes and job creation. And no interview would be complete without talking about the budget. Enjoy.

Rep. Richard DeBolt:

Q: There are currently bills to close state government for one day per month, limit state worker salaries and another in the House to make official about $50 million in cuts from Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budget. Which of those do you support, what other ideas do you have and what’s the timeline?

DeBolt: I guess the first thing that I would like to say about it is we saw some of these problems because we have a systematically flawed budget process. We have to change how we budget and what our priorities are.
I would break the budgeting process up: I would do an education only budget first. It’s our paramount duty, so we should fund it first. Then we can fund public safety and the vulnerable. Then, with whatever is left, you make the rest of your budget. So you protect the children and the most vulnerable.

Q: What about the furloughs?

DeBolt: As far as furloughs, we haven’t had a chance to explore the bills fully yet. The bills were introduced and the process probably broke down a little bit so we don’t have all the details yet.
From my perspective, we think everything should be on the table. We need to make sure that what we’re doing to balance the budget is real – not just delaying costs until later.

Q: You mentioned an education-first budget. When I was covering the Oregon Legislature in 2005, the Republican House Speaker suggested a similar proposal to fund education first.

DeBolt: Oh yeah — and what happened?

Q: It didn’t pass, and they were in session for about eight months that year because the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-controlled Senate couldn’t agree on much. Why is that a controversial idea?

DeBolt: I remember that. We’ve been suggesting the education-budget first idea since 2002. We haven’t even gotten a hearing on it.

Q: Why do you think that is?

DeBolt: I think that Olympia is stuck in the past and has a tendency to be myopic in their viewpoints. So if its outside the box, it’s probably not going to be considered. We’re not a super change-oriented place.

Q: So would closing state government for one day a month be something you could support?

DeBolt: I don’t know because for some services, it could be problematic. For example, I want to get our permitting wait times down. Can they do the same amount of work if we’re furloughing people? That’s of interest to me. I don’t know how the functions of government would be changed. I don’t know if you can just arbitrarily close all the agencies and make it work. If it’s agencies that support our economy and help move us forward, we shouldn’t slow that down.

Q: One big policy issue has been public safety, in the wake of the police shootings last year. A Constitutional amendment is on the table — is that the right move? Is there danger in amending the Constitution so soon after these crimes? (more…)

Tags: Budget, cuts, marijuana, public safety, taxes

Here are a few highlights from today’s calendar:

- Right now, tune into floor session.

- At 1:30 p.m., the House Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Committee will decide whether to decriminalize or legalize marijuana. Last week, Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson told me she thought the bill to decriminalize marijuana had a good chance, but PubliCola and The Stranger report that the bill is dead. This will be live on TVW.

- Also at 1:30, the House Commerce Committee is considering a bill to outlaw beverages like “Joose” that combine alcohol and caffeine or other stimulants.

- At the same time, the Senate will Ways & Means Committee will hear an overview of the Capital Budget. That will play on TVW later.

- At 3:30, the Senate Higher Education Committee will discuss whether UW and other four-year universities should be able to set their own tuition. That’s live on TVW.

Tags: alcohol, day 10, marijuana

Right now, the bills to legalize marijuana are playing live on TVW and streaming on our web site. And about 1,000 people all over the world are watching.

Here’s a list of the countries of origin of people watching right now, courtesy of our web department:
Australia, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Germany, Estonia, France, Ireland, Japan, Korea and, of course, the U.S.

In fact, the number of people watching is about the same as the number who watched Gov. Chris Gregoire’s State of the State address yesterday.

Here’s a screen shot of the map. I will say it looks way more impressive in person, in the TVW web team’s control room.

Tags: marijuana, TVW

Rep. Roger Goodman, one of the prime sponsors of the bill to legalize marijuana, just testified.

“One million students in the U.S. sell marijuana,” he said, adding that it’s easier for students to get than beer. Goodman said legalizing marijuana would mean it’s regulated.

Goodman said he’s on law enforcement’s side on this one. “Law enforcement is not getting the respect that they deserve” because they’re faced with trying to enforce a law that is widely ignored, he said.

“We’ve already given up. We’ve given up control of this market to criminal enterprises,” he said. If lawmakers legalize it, they can regulate it and keep it away from children.

Tags: Goodman, marijuana