The challenges of regulating marijuana use
Rules to determine store locations, whether food with pot can be sold
WASHINGTON — The battle to legally grow, sell, buy and smoke pot in California has been a long one.
Voters in the state ushered in medical marijuana 20 years ago but took until last fall to approve a plan to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana.
Now, California officials are faced with setting rules for a product that has been outlawed by the federal government since the 1930s — a challenge lawmakers and regulators in the other states that chose some form of marijuana legalization in the November election also are confronting.
Like California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada voted to legalize recreational marijuana. They also will need rules about where pot shops can be located and whether dispensaries can sell food and candy infused with marijuana. They will also have to dovetail their recreational regulations with an existing medical marijuana industry; Arkansas, Florida and North Dakota will be building medical systems from the ground up
It could take several years. Colorado and Washington paved the way for recreational marijuana by legalizing it in 2012, but they are sorting out policy details.
“There’s no perfect implementation; there’s no perfect legalization effort,” said Michael Correia, a federal lobbyist for the National Cannabis Industry Association. “There’s go- ing to be hiccups.”
In Montana, medical marijuana has been legal since 2004 but had become out of reach for many patients following a series of limitations issued by the Legislature. Now, after a November referendum, the state is poised to roll back restrictions on the number of patients a medical marijuana grower can serve.
Maryland, which ap- proved medical marijuana in 2014, is dealing with a spate of lawsuits against the commission charged with awarding sales licenses. Shops just opened in Alaska in October — almost two years after recreational marijuana was legalized there — and in Oregon, officials rushed to approve new packaging and labels just days before rules took effect in October.
Arkansas and Massachusetts are discovering the difficulty of setting up a regulatory system. Arkansas has delayed the launch of its medical marijuana program to give public agencies more time to prepare, and lawmakers have introduced bills to restrict how the drug is used.
Massachusetts lawmakers delayed the opening of marijuana shops by six months and proposed bills that would limit how much can be grown and possessed.
States also face banking challenges, licensing skirmishes and drugged driving debates. But despite all the difficulties, more states are expected to jump into the legalization fray.
This year, at least 12 states are considering legislation to legalize and regulate marijuana. Another seven are looking to decriminalize simple possession of marijuana and nearly 30 ballot measures related to marijuana are being considered for elections in 2017 and 2018.
One test of how well legalized marijuana is working will be when California, with about 39 million people and the sixth-largest economy in the world, opens its recreational marijuana shops.
Market researchers estimate the California cannabis market will grow by 18.5 percent annually over the next five years, reaching $6.5 billion by 2020.