Pubdate: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 Source: Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI) Copyright: 2014 Star Advertiser Contact: http://www.staradvertiser.com/info/Star-Advertiser_Letter_to_the_Editor.html Website: http://www.staradvertiser.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5154 Author: Kirk Johnson, New York Times Page: A3 WASHINGTON STILL IN CONFLICT AS LEGAL SALES OF POT BEGIN VANCOUVER, WASH. - John Larson, a recently retired high school science and math teacher, hopes to be in the first wave of legal recreational marijuana salespeople opening shop in Washington state this week. Larson, 67, who was talked into the venture by his children, said he had never tried marijuana, and, in fact, voted against legalizing it in 2012. But as a business - well, that's different. "If people were dumb enough to vote it in, I'm all for it," he said near his shop in southern Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland, Ore. "There's a demand and I have a product." After nearly two years of anticipation, excitement and dread by still-divided Washington residents, the first licenses for legal sale of recreational marijuana will be issued Monday, state officials said. Sales are to start about 24 hours later. But the rollout is not unfolding as anyone quite expected it to, from the seemingly unlikely business people like Larson who are leading the charge to the downright odd pattern of where the first shops will open. Seattle, for example, the state's largest city with a population of 652,000 and perhaps most marijuana-friendly, will have only a single store initially, and a tiny one at that: 620 square feet, called Cannabis City. But Vancouver, about one-fourth Seattle's size, in a largely conservative county that has tried to slow or stop marijuana businesses with strict land-use rules, could have three shops. Tacoma, also in a county that has tried to block marijuana businesses, might have four. The pattern came down to chance and circumstance, said Mikhail Carpenter, a spokesman for the Washington State Liquor Control Board, which wrote the regulations and administers the system. With multiple inspections and requirements to meet, "a lot of people weren't ready," Carpenter said. Only about 20 licenses out of 334 authorized by the regulations will be granted in this first wave, Carpenter said, with many would-be operators slowed by financing troubles, inspection questions or other issues. Larson, for example, applied for three licenses in three cities, and two were denied, in each case because state inspectors said the boundary line was too close to a licensed day care center. He disagreed but quickly gave up: "You can't argue with the state." And even the shops that open will not have that much to sell because marijuana growers got their licenses only in March, not enough time to produce a big crop. And while many of the new business operators are brimming with optimism about the new market, others say the road ahead might be harder than people want to believe. Protesters in Prosser, for example, have been regularly picketing the chiropractic office of Tim Thompson, a co-owner of the town's marijuana shop. Initiative 502, which legalized recreational marijuana, passed with 55 percent of the vote statewide but lost in much of central and eastern Washington. "They camp out in front of my office every day," Thompson said in a telephone interview. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom