The legislature has opened this week, so I’ll be watching and tracking the bills related to cannabis. I don’t anticipate much serious activity mainly because the agreement is that legislation not related to covid or economic recovery be kept to a minimum this year. Then, WA has reached the point after 8 years where dramatic changes to the law aren’t really needed anymore.
The capitol is surrounded by three levels of perimeter, manned by three different law enforcement agencies. There will be a try at conducting all the business remotely, which makes monitoring their activity much easier. We’ll see how it works.
Every year a bill is filed to legalize home grown marijuana; WA is the only state which prohibits it. This bill fails every session because it completely lacks support from anyone, or at least appears that way to the lawmakers. All bills require champions to see them through to passage, and the homegrowing folk don’t have an organization or lobbyists to play this role. Licensed commercial growers won’t pay any attention, and retailers won’t bother because they have all the weed they can sell. Those that currently have a personal grow are probably best served if they stay discrete and everyone involved keep the status quo. If it passes it will because a few lawmakers want to pass it so they don’t have to deal with it every year.
This session’s homegrow bill has a feature in it that I like: it specifically says that the existence of a personal grow cannot be a reason to seek or execute a search warrant of the premises, which can turn a routine service call to the police into a nightmare when they see four plants growing in the garage.
I’ll be writing about the bills as we go along, but things will be quite quiet this session.