Pubdate: Sun, 29 Jun 2014
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2014 the Associated Press
Contact:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Gene Johnson, the Associated Press
Page: B7

SHORTAGES, HIGH PRICES PREDICTED FOR WASHINGTON'S FIRST POT STORES

Just Two Growers' Crops Tested So Far

Randy Oliver has a pressing question as legal marijuana sales are 
about to begin in Washington: Where's all the weed?

Oliver is the chief scientist at Analytical 360 in Yakima, the only 
lab that has been certified to test the heavily taxed marijuana that 
will wind up on store shelves next month. So far, just two licensed 
growers have turned in samples for testing, with another due to turn 
in a small batch this coming week, he told The Associated Press on Saturday.

"There's such a small stream of samples coming through," he said. 
"There's going to be some long lines and some high prices."

The state's Liquor Control Board has been warning of shortages when 
the first stores open. The board plans to issue the first 15 to 20 
retail licenses July 7, with shops allowed to open the next day if 
they're ready. It's not clear how many stores that will be. Board 
staff said at a meeting last week that just one store in Seattle is 
ready for its final inspection.

Only 79 of the more than 2,600 people who applied for 
marijuana-growing licenses last fall have been approved as growers, 
and many of them aren't ready to harvest.

"Will there be shortages?" said Randy Simmons, the board's legal-pot 
project manager. "The answer to that is, yes."

But the figures provided by Oliver on Saturday suggest how serious 
those shortages could be. The samples provided to Analytical 360 
represent a maximum harvest so far of 190 pounds - and Oliver said he 
expects 20 to 30 percent of the samples to fail because of high mold 
counts. Marijuana associated with those samples can't be sold as 
dried bud, but can be used to make cannabis oil.

The amount harvested so far "isn't going to stay on the shelves very 
long," Oliver said.

Oliver said he's worried that his lab could see a crush of samples 
provided in the days before the first stores open, swamping his lab 
and delaying the arrival of product on store shelves.

"We can probably handle 100 samples a day, but if we get 300 samples 
thrown at us?" he said. "I'm worried about everybody coming to us at 
the last minute."

Growers have to provide samples for every strain of cannabis they 
grow, and for every five pounds of flowers they harvest.

Oliver also said glitches with the software the state is using to 
track the bar-coded marijuana from clone to sale could compound the 
issue. He said his lab has had trouble entering test results in the 
program, and some marijuana that passed has shown up as having 
failed. It took one grower five days to provide the samples to the 
lab because of software problems, he said, characterizing the bugs as 
nothing unusual for a new program.

It isn't clear how soon other labs might be certified or be ready to 
handle samples. Seattle's Sea of Green Farms is one of the two 
growers who have had their pot tested. Bob Leeds, a partner there, 
confirmed that as of Saturday, the only certified lab that shows up 
in the tracking system is Analytical 360.

The other grower tested is Spokane's Kouchlock Productions. Kouchlock 
and Sea of Green were among the very first growers licensed in March.

Spokesmen for the Liquor Board did not immediately return a call or 
emails on Saturday.

The Sea of Green team was spending the weekend packaging the 
approximately 40 pounds of marijuana it harvested recently, Leeds 
said. It has contracts with four shops to sell most of it already - 
for $4,000 a pound. That's nearly $9 per gram (a pound weighs just 
over 453 grams) before the retailer's markup, plus 25 percent retail 
excise tax and state and local sales taxes. At the state's unlicensed 
medical dispensaries, cannabis often sells for $8 to $12 per gram.

"When people start calling, we have to tell them we're not going to 
have anything for them until August," Leeds said. "That's a long way 
off when you're trying to open a business."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom