Washington will be looking at some “touch-up” bills that address a few minor things, Oregon is working on their rules, Alaska is finishing up their rules, and Colorado will begin work next week on their latest marijuana freak-out. California is trying to fix an error they made in their law, which won’t be followed anyway.
Bills submitted in Washington reduce the cannabis tax from 37% to 25% to get a tad closer to Oregon’s. Other bills allow branded merchandise to be sold or given away (shirts, coffee cups, other advertising schwag), delivery services to be allowed in Seattle, reduce the residency requirements for licensees, allow home growing of marijuana, and prohibit local bans on production and sales.
Colorado is freaking out over pesticides found in retail cannabis, a problem made worse because they neglected to implement testing and laboratories to perform those tests. Usually food-grade consumables are subject to USDA and FDA regulations, but they decline to touch the subject because it’s illegal at the federal level.
Washington implemented labs and testing from day one, which is good. But, it’s been found that some of the authorized labs give a “pass” to every sample they test. Washington left out a procedure for testing the testing labs.
Oregon is taking cues from both states and is implementing a very robust testing system with strict standards. Unfortunately they seem to be going a bit far in their limits, making it almost impossible to pass the tests.
Residency tests for a license is an issue in all states, and we’ll come out of this season’s law-making with some new approaches to this question.
Of course, none of these things are guaranteed to be implemented, they are just bills at this point. But they are a good sample of the little things overlooked when the legalization efforts were implemented.