Medical marijuana’s future hazy

Washington worried recreational pot will harm medicinal use

SEATTLE — As the proprietor of a medical marijuana dispensary in Seattle, Dawn Darington has seen patients wracked by AIDS and cancer. She’s also seen “patients” who show up for a free pot brownie and never come back.

Now, Washington is pushing forward with plans to entice the latter into its new world of legal, taxed recreational pot, and advocates like Darington say they’re worried about where that’s going to leave those who actually need cannabis.

A state work group on Monday is due to release its recommendations on how to regulate Washington’s freewheeling medical marijuana industry — recommendations that could include reductions in how much pot patients can have, an end to the collective gardens that have supplied the sick and the not-so-sick for the past 15 years, stricter requirements for obtaining medical marijuana authorizations and taxes on medical pot.

“I’m terrified a bunch of that, if not all of it, is going to be lost — that the recreational users have thrown us under the bus,” said Darington, of Choice Wellness Center. “When they put a tax on the sale of Viagra is the day I am willing to sit at the table and discuss putting a tax on this medicine.”

Voters in Washington and Colorado last fall legalized marijuana for recreational use, and the states are preparing to allow its sale at licensed stores. In Colorado, medical marijuana is already regulated and subject to sales tax, with 109,000 registered patients, and it isn’t clear to what extent it might undermine the recreational market.

But in Washington, lawmakers and state officials are concerned that licensed pot stores won’t be able to compete with medical dispensaries selling unregulated, untaxed marijuana — thus cutting into the amount of tax revenue Washington makes from the sale of recreational pot.

Furthermore, the U.S. Justice Department has made clear that while it will allow states to develop tight regulations for marijuana — regulations that address key federal law enforcement priorities, such as keeping legal pot away from kids and off the black market — it won’t tolerate unregulated pot-growing or sales.

Washington approved the medical use of marijuana in 1998, two years after California. Twenty states and the District of Columbia now allow pot as medicine, and Washington’s system is among the most lax, with no registration require- ments for patients or oversight of the pot gardens and dispensaries that serve them.

State lawmakers this year directed the Liquor Control Board, Department of Health and Department of Revenue to form a work group and come up with recommendations for how medical and recreational marijuana might coexist. Documents prepared by the group and released to advocates under public records requests show that the officials have been considering ideas that include getting rid of medical marijuana entirely, thus forcing patients to buy taxed pot at licensed stores; requiring a higher burden of proof that a patient suffers from a qualifying ailment, as well as greater follow-up care by the medical professional who authorizes the pot use; and requiring that minors have parental permission before being authorized to use medical marijuana.

Alison Holcomb, the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington lawyer who drafted the recreational marijuana law, said she expects the work group to recommend that any business wishing to conduct commercial marijuana transactions be required to obtain a license under Initiative 502, the recreational pot law.

That might effectively close most Washington medical marijuana dispensaries, which have proliferated even though they’re not technically allowed under state law.