Pubdate: Sun, 08 Mar 2015
Source: Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
Copyright: 2015 The Oregonian
Contact:  http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/324

REGULATING MEDICAL MARIJUANA WILL HELP RECREATIONAL MARKET SUCCEED

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission last week told the Legislature 
what it needed in order to craft regulations for an accountable 
retail recreational marijuana market.

The list is huge and includes requests as mundane as requiring sales 
clerks at marijuana shops to carry permits, much as any bartender would.

But one request is key and poses complication: The OLCC wants 
lawmakers to decide whether Oregon's flourishing but unregulated 
medical marijuana program will be tracked from seed to sale so that 
all pot moving through the retail system is accounted for and priced 
competitively.

Estimates by the OLCC call for recreational pot to initially capture 
just 20 percent of marijuana sales in Oregon. In a letter to 
lawmakers, OLCC Chairman Rob Patridge states: "The recreational 
system will have to prove its superiority in terms of security, 
quality, convenience and price to overcome the illegal market ... and 
a medical system largely free of regulations and associated costs 
that will be present in the recreational system." More challenging 
still: "Federal guideline compliance will be diminished if Oregon 
Medical Marijuana Program licensees or growers are allowed to produce 
or sell product through the recreational system." Most challenging of 
all: "Because plants and product are not tracked in the Oregon 
Medical Marijuana Program, the program cannot provide assurance there 
is no diversion to the black market."

Patridge's comments are significant in that they are a blunt claim by 
a top official that medical marijuana needs reining in if a 
recreational market is to flourish and achieve Measure 91's aim of 
decriminalizing the drug by driving out the black market.

Put another way, the OLCC, in following federal guidelines to 
implement a regulated recreational market, would run a fool's errand 
to implement Measure 91 if the medical marijuana program were to 
continue untethered and place some of its products alongside those in 
the highly regulated recreational market.

Medical marijuana could continue in its own orbit, of course, however 
weird and unfair.

It is true that many medical marijuana growers have built solid, 
creditable relationships with their clients, whose sometimes highly 
specific needs are met. But medical marijuana could not, in the 
absence of tracking technology that should begin at all marijuana 
grow sites and extend to all retail cash registers, rationally find 
itself under the same roof as recreational marijuana. And that's 
where legal marijuana belongs in an open market in Oregon: under one 
roof. It's high time that leakage of so-called excess marijuana from 
some medical marijuana producers be contained.

Practical considerations associated with implementation of a 
recreational market creep in. Oregon communities must soon find the 
room within their zoning maps to site new pot sales shops, which will 
face location limits and, minimally, the requirement to be situated a 
still-debated distance from schools.

Portland, for example, already has dozens of medical dispensaries. 
Where, then, is the room for recreational-only pot shops?

In Kirkland, Washington, voters robustly supported a statewide 
measure to legalize recreational marijuana but still struggle to site 
two stores as a not-in-my-backyard drama plays out.

Patridge is right: The Legislature should require that Oregon's 
medical marijuana program, under the aegis of the Oregon Health 
Authority, embrace the discipline of accountability if it is to find 
so-called "co-location" with recreational pot sales.

It's high time that leakage of so-called excess marijuana from some 
medical marijuana producers be contained.

While Measure 91 applies only to recreational pot, its goal of making 
the drug recreationally available and cheap enough to work against 
the black market cannot be achieved unless regulation extends to all 
forms of the drug.

Separately, lawmakers last week considered legislation that would 
change the terms of Measure 91. Senate Bill 542 would allow towns and 
cities to choose whether to collect retail sales taxes on 
recreational marijuana.

Members of the Legislature's Joint Committee on Implementing Measure 
91 heard Association of Oregon Counties attorney Rob Bovett deride 
limits upon cities and counties whose likely court challenges could 
snag the attention of the federal government - which, he noted, still 
prohibits marijuana. "Our entire licensing scheme is at risk," Bovett 
told committee members, adding, "this would be a high-stakes game of 
legal chicken." It was unclear whether Bovett found traction from 
committee members, but his legal arguments will be reviewed by 
legislative counsel.

Still, the larger issue demands debate soon by lawmakers: More than 
70 cities, towns and counties in Oregon have staked a claim to tax 
retail recreational marijuana at the point of sale - this beyond 
Measure 91's stipulation that they should not and that a simple state 
tax at the producers' level would suffice.

It may or may not, yet the claims by cities of how onerous Measure 
91's implementation would be are at this point speculative. Unknown 
is what the revenues will be once recreational weed is available, and 
hence the tax yield from it. Better that the Legislature at this 
point insist upon parallel regulation of medical marijuana and allow, 
at least in the first few years, a single state tax upon the sale of 
recreational marijuana to work.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom