After a Spate of Recalls in Denver, Should Users Be Worried? It's Hard to Say. Because Marijuana Is Still Illegal in Most Places, There's No Official "Safe Level" of Pesticides. Despite fining two marijuana growers and suspending the licenses of two others for using unapproved pesticides, Washington state hasn't recalled any products for pesticides during the 18 months that legal pot sales have been allowed. The city of Denver, by comparison, recently recalled 19 pot products for pesticides in 19 weeks. [continues 1200 words]
Just after Uncle Ike's Pot Shop opened in Seattle's Central District, it boasted in an ad, "Our weed cures Ebola." Knowing that merchants in the new industry weren't allowed to make any medical claims about pot, the fine print disclaimer winked: "If you believe this ad, you are a (expletive) moron." That in-your-face Vern Fonk-on-weed sensibility has helped make Uncle Ike's the state's top-selling pot store, with $1.4 million in monthly sales. [continues 1955 words]
Several longtime Seattle medical-marijuana businesses filed a lawsuit Friday against the state Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) alleging that regulators are not following their own rules in issuing a new round of licenses for retail stores. At issue is the process of bringing medical businesses into the state's licensed recreational-retail system. The Legislature last year gave the LCB authority to license new stores, with priority given to longtime medical players seen as good actors, in following rules and paying taxes. [continues 395 words]
Reduced Buffers in Some Places City, State at Odds Over New Licenses Legal pot businesses would be allowed in more parts of Seattle under rules approved Monday by the City Council. Mayor Ed Murray proposed relaxing state-imposed buffers between pot shops and some sensitive areas, such as parks and arcades. As required by state law, the buffers would remain at 1,000 feet between pot businesses and schools and playgrounds. Murray's aim was to accommodate new shops the state will license as it tries to fold medical-marijuana dispensaries into its system for recreational stores, while trying to keep them from clustering. [continues 509 words]
A Scientist Who Looked at the Data Says a Number of Labs Are Overly Grower-Friendly. Some state-certified marijuana labs testing for microbes such as E.coli and mold appear more friendly to pot merchants than others, according to an analysis by a Woodinville data scientist. Four labs rejected none of the pot they tested over a three-month period last year, according to the analysis by Jim MacRae. Four other labs failed more than 12 percent of samples tested over the same time, with two labs rejecting 44 percent of samples for microbes. [continues 1034 words]
Liquor and Cannabis Board Would Double Number of Stores in Seattle Trying to fold medical marijuana into the state's retail system, state Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) staff are recommending an additional 222 retail stores around Washington, including 21 in Seattle. If adopted on Jan. 6 by the LCB's three board members, the Wednesday proposal could double the number of stores in Seattle and increase the statewide total from 334 to 556 stores. In all, King County could see 53 additional stores. Bellevue could double its number of stores from four to eight. Ten other King County cities could see one or two more stores. [continues 385 words]
Medical-Marijuana Merchants Smaller Buffer Zones Would Rule Out Some Current Sites Alex Cooley was a pioneer in legitimizing the pot industry in Seattle. But after seeing Mayor Ed Murray's plan for licensing more pot merchants, Cooley wonders why he bothered. The mayor's proposal would not allow Cooley, the first medical marijuana grower to come out of the shadows and gain all appropriate city building permits, to continue farming at his Sodo location because it is too close to a childcare center. [continues 864 words]
Wants to Ease Buffer-Zone Rules No Change in Distance of Shops From Schools Seattle could see a significant increase, perhaps a tripling, in the number of retail-pot stores in city limits under a proposal by Mayor Ed Murray. The mayor wants to loosen buffer zones that now require legal pot businesses to be 1,000 feet from child-care centers, libraries, recreation facilities, public parks and transit centers. Murray would decrease the required distance to 500 feet, roughly a city block or two. [continues 694 words]
Salon Goes Deep into Pot's Role in Creativity The subject of the lecture was infinity. The setting was the Cloud Room on Capitol Hill, where folks sat on couches and a thick white rug, nibbling on dried apricots dipped in chocolate. Jerry Zimmerman, a fixture at Canlis for decades, played a baby grand piano as the crowd of about 80 settled in. Speaker Lesley Hazleton, an author and psychologist, then uncorked her tale of wonder and love for infinity at the event, which had sold out of $16 tickets in four hours. [continues 837 words]
Not Mandatory However Growers Who Comply Can Show 'Seal of Approval' Washington state announced new rules for pesticide testing in pot as the first product liability lawsuit was filed against the pot industry in Colorado over pesticide use. New emergency rules, which took effect this week in Washington, do not make testing for pesticides mandatory. Instead, they create a system that aims to give legal pot merchants and consumers who want it some assurance that their pot does not contain residue of unapproved pesticides. [continues 548 words]
MARIJUANA Half the drivers with active THC in their blood also were under the influence of alcohol. Marijuana use appears to have increased as a factor in deadly crashes last year in Washington. New data from the Washington Traffic Safety Commission shows the number of drivers involved in fatal crashes with THC in their body increased from 38 in 2013 to 75 this past year. About half those 75 drivers had active THC - the main psychoactive chemical in pot - above the level that legally determines intoxication. [continues 378 words]
Seeks Council Input Citations Still Skew Toward Blacks in Latest Report That Made News After another round of tickets for public pot use skewed disproportionately toward black people, a frustrated Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O'Toole asked City Council members if they want her cops to stop issuing the $27 fines. With 72 such tickets generating national news, O'Toole said Monday she didn't want to report to the council every six months, as is the policy, about tickets written by officers responding to complaints from the public. [continues 295 words]
WHAT HAPPENED? The revenue bonanza predicted by some for recreational marijuana hasn't materialized in the first year; nor have the horrors imagined by opponents. Before Washington voters could decide on legal weed, finance whizzes in state government had to project its tax bounty. The forecasters looked into their Excel tables and shrugged. The state's take, they said, from pot taxes in the first year of sales could be nothing - or could be as much as $249 million. That was the uncertain future facing an untested state-regulated system operating in defiance of the federal ban on all marijuana. [continues 1455 words]
Seattle Dispensaries Included in Study Items From Here Had Less THC Than Indicated Yet another sampling of marijuana products has found inaccurate labeling of potency. A new article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports that all but one of the 23 edible products bought in Seattle medical-marijuana dispensaries last year were improperly labeled. Most of the baked goods, beverages and candy contained less THC than their labels said. THC is the main psychoactive chemical in marijuana. [continues 511 words]
This is the third story in our Seed to Sale series, following a legal pot farm as it tries to bring its historic product to a starving market. The pistils, or white strands that mark the blooming of marijuana flowers, have turned amber, the color of money to the pot farmers inside a Sodo warehouse. It's time for the first harvest of "West Seattle Kush" by AuricAG, one of the pioneering legal pot growers in Washington state. The team of local guys isn't popping Champagne yet. Drying, curing and crucial lab tests are to come - and probably more of the unanticipated problems that have stressed the AuricAG team in their race to market. [continues 1396 words]
Blacks were disproportionately cited by Seattle police for consuming pot in public in the first six months of 2014. In a report delivered to the City Council Wednesday, the police department said officers wrote 82 tickets for public pot consumption in the first half of the year, with 37 percent of those going to blacks. Blacks account for 8 percent of the Seattle population, according to 2010 census figures; 50 percent of the tickets went to whites, who represent 70 percent of the city's residents. [continues 556 words]
Stores Open With Celebrations, Plans for Bigger Supply Deb Greene was looking forward to some blissful shut-eye after buying the first pot Tuesday from Cannabis City in Sodo. She hadn't slept Monday night as she waited in line outside. Greene, 65, a retiree, said she doesn't smoke pot often. But now she could enjoy it legally at her Ballard home, maybe with "Game of Thrones" on TV. "It's incredibly liberating," she said. "It's the dream of every retiree, sleep in and smoke a bowl." [continues 1137 words]
Red Tape, Pot Shortage, High Cost Keep Most From Launching Today The first 25 legal pot stores have received state licenses to start selling their historic wares, but just one store will open Tuesday in the state's largest city and county to serve a long line that started forming the day before. How did that happen since at least four others are opening statewide? State regulators point to store owners and say most weren't prepared to open just yet. "Some were still trying to work out financing, some were waiting for permitting," said Mikhail Carpenter, spokesman for the state Liquor Control Board. [continues 916 words]
You're curious, concerned or psyched. It's been 20 months, or some 600 days, since Washington voters legalized weed, and the first wave of retail pot stores is finally poised to open Tuesday. In the meantime, Seattle elected a legally married gay mayor, the Seahawks won the Super Bowl and the Interstate 5 Skagit River Bridge collapsed. It's been so long since we voted for Initiative 502 that the details aren't easy to recall. And there were details. The initiative was 65 pages long. It specified where pot commerce couldn't occur and the precise amounts of bud and brownies adults could possess. It earmarked taxes and set license fees. [continues 1385 words]
Seattle Startup The Partners in Sodo's Auricag, Among the First 76 Licensed Growers in the State, Are Finding It's Not Easy Cultivating Marijuana on an Industrial Scale. Editor's note: This is the second story in a seed-to-sale series focusing on one pot-growing operation in Seattle as owners take their historic product from seedling to retail-store shelf. A marijuana grow room in Sodo blazes from a dozen 1,000-watt bulbs. The light is so intense that Mark Arnold, assistant grower for pioneering pot producer AuricAG, wears blue-tinted lenses to cut the glare. [continues 1660 words]
