As a review, while Washington passed Initiative 502 to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana operations, the state failed to enact any rules on the medical (also legal) marijuana enterprises. So there are no controls of any kind on the MMJ operations in the state.
I assert that these operations are actually what is referred to as “the black market”: some of the “medicine” goes out the front door to card-holders, but an awful lot goes out the back door to other distribution and sales outlets.
While Seattle currently has 4 or 5 regulated 502 stores, they guess that there are 330 MMJ outlets operating without supervision, enforcement, or tax bills.
So the state-approved MMJ stores, unregulated, untaxed, and with no need to fear enforcement, are the competition for the the new absurdly regulated, insanely scrutinized, and way too heavily taxed state-approved 502 stores.
Seattle has taken this situation on themselves, proposing to offer up legislation for the city by the end of the year. This is likely a move to goad the state legislature into passing something quickly, but if they don’t Seattle will have to implement their bluff.
Seattle has a precedent to follow: San Diego is trying, quite aggressively, to deal with the same problem in the completely out-of-control state of California. This effort makes frequent headlines in SD with the words “raid, eviction, shut-down, illegal, tax-evasion” usually associated with the store closures.
The struggling 502 stores don’t want this kind of publicity associated with their businesses, which pollutes the attitudes of the citizens towards them.
Seattle can tighten up the regulations and enforcement of building codes, business licenses, and tax collection which they discovered they were doing none of the above. But they must tread carefully. One thing they can do is to call in the DEA to shut down these un-approved outlets, but that is not what the 502 industry would welcome at all.
Then, there’s the 1000-foot rule. No 502 facility in Washington can be located within 1000 feet of a place where children congregate, and that makes locating the operations extremely difficult. That rule needs some tweaking, but for now it is what it is. Simply enforcing this rule in Seattle on medical stores would probably eliminate 90% of all the MMJ places, if not all.
Any closures of MMJ growing operations would mean an unknown number of plants would be quietly relocated to somewhere else, really messing up the tight “seed-to-sale” tracking the state does for 502 operations. Or encourage illegal grows elsewhere in the state.
Given the tight time-frame to put together something, I doubt Seattle is being realistic about what is required, if they are really serious.