WSLCB - Cannabis Advisory Council
(January 6, 2021)

Wednesday January 6, 2021 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM Observed
WSLCB Enforcement Logo

The Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) Cannabis Advisory Council (CAC) was formed in March 2017 to engage with cannabis stakeholders in a public setting to discuss the agency’s cannabis policies and issues of concern. Chaired by Board Member Ollie Garrett, the CAC membership has been primarily composed of representatives from licensee trade groups, but has included members representing tribal, consumer, minority, and medical patient perspectives.

Observations

Goals for the 2021 Washington state legislative session, which begins Monday January 11th, were articulated by WSLCB agency leadership and Cannabis Advisory Council members.

Here are some observations from the Wednesday January 6th Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) Cannabis Advisory Council (CAC) meeting.

  • Director Rick Garza described an improving budget situation for the agency in the next biennium and Director of Legislative Relations Chris Thompson provided the WSLCB legislative agenda for 2021.
    • Garza, who briefly addressed the agency’s funding earlier that week, explained the WSLCB had submitted “our ask” to Governor Jay Inslee and the full amount was included in the Governor’s 2021-23 biennium budget proposal. He said usually the agency sought “enhancements to our programs. We learn that we need more help here, or we need help over here in Licensing or Enforcement or in budget,” and “decision packages” were submitted to the Governor’s staff. “Well, guess what folks,” Garza stated, “with the [coronavirus] pandemic, we had the reverse occur” and the Washington State Office of Financial Management (WA OFM, “the Governor’s budget office”) issued Operating Budget Instructions for boards and commissions “to cut 15% of their budget.” He said that process happened and “obviously because Licensing and Enforcement are our largest divisions that’s where a lot of the cuts would’ve occurred.” Garza explained that the agency had been spared those cuts due to an “increase with respect to revenue” projected by the State. “What was anticipated to be a billion dollar hole ended up not being anywhere near that,” he noted. As a result, WSLCB was one of the State agencies which Garza said incurred no “reduction in our budget at all” which would aid the agency’s “duty as a regulator” (audio - 3m).
    • Thompson laid out the agency’s minimized agenda for the year which would focus on a single alcohol agency request bill while helping ensure previously approved social equity grant funds weren’t lost (audio - 4m).
      • Thompson said the “formal agenda the LCB anticipates going into the 2021 session with is limited to one likely agency request bill” dealing with alcohol and having “no impact or implications at all for the cannabis industry.”
        • Curious about the request bill, Hirschburg asked whether it would make any temporary alcohol allowances permanent to which Thompson said it would provide a “temporary extension” to “some allowances.” Hirschburg then asked who requested the agency put forward a bill, and Thompson replied that “the Governor’s office asked us to work on this” (audio - 1m).
        • Thompson described the development of the request bill at the December 2020 Alcohol Advisory Council meeting.
        • During an August 2020 board meeting, a representative of Prevention Voices, a relatively new education and advocacy coalition, told the Board its members had concerns about “loosening of the regulations” in response to the pandemic. A slide presented during the coalition’s Pre-Session Summit on January 7th stated their policy priority for 2021: “Prevent the LCB Temporary Allowances due to COVID-19 from becoming permanent.”
      • Thompson said one budget issue involving the agency would be addressed “related to the social equity program.”
        • He elaborated that due to the delayed start of the Washington State Legislative Task Force on Social Equity in Cannabis, “efforts to stand up the social equity program have been significantly delayed.” According to Thompson, agency staff raised concerns with the Governor’s Office and WA OFM at a “very late stage of the budget development program” that an appropriation of $1.1 million for the technical assistance grant program in the enacting law could be lost as “there was a good likelihood that those funds would not be able to be awarded prior to the end of the fiscal year.”
        • To avoid a “loss of funds to the program,” WSLCB staff reached out to the Governor’s office and the Washington State Department of Commerce which managed the money’s disbursement under law. They discussed delays in task force guidance to the WSLCB “on how to structure this program.” Thompson relayed that WSLCB asked that the Governor’s budget include “an effort to try and recapture those funds for this program out into the next biennium” and this was added into the final proposal with “half into each fiscal year.” He said this was one way Governor Inslee was “showing that his support and his emphasis in the budget on diversity, equity, and inclusion has extended to this social equity in cannabis program.” This would allow the grant money to be used when WSLCB and Commerce implement “the guidance from the task force,” Thompson added.
        • Sardinas floated the idea of issuing the funds to current minority cannabis licensees during the December 2020 social equity task force meeting (audio - 1m).
  • Industry, consumer, and patient representatives to the Council described their priorities for the year ahead.
    • Washington CannaBusiness Association (WACA). Davies reported that WACA’s legislative agenda was posted online. She was grateful to hear from staff about reforms underway at the agency, particularly around enforcement reform. Davies said the group’s priority was to “make space for the social equity conversation to take place and be helpful where we can,” and as a result WACA wouldn’t “be bringing any legislation forward this year.” Regardless, they would remain focused on regulatory activity “including, you know, continuing to make sure that the traceability system is working properly” (audio - 2m, written comments).
    • The Cannabis Alliance. Ryan said she appreciated hearing the “broad support within the industry” and “without” regarding the “patient excise tax bill,” SB 5004. She encouraged the Council to support the legislation, which would remove the 37% excise tax for patients registered with the State. Ryan said the “full support” of the Alliance was behind HB 1019, a bill to allow adult home growing of cannabis, noting “we hope this is the last year we’ll have to hear it.” Another effort would focus on “expanding our expungement bill that passed a couple of years ago to provide resources for that information to actually get out to people who are affected.” Ryan then said the Alliance was also pushing to have the term ‘marijuana’ removed from the Revised Code of Washington (RCW) and replaced with ‘cannabis,’ as well as “other small equity changes” (audio - 6m).
    • Washington SunGrowers Industry Association (WSIA). Moberg painted a picture of unchecked overproduction in the legal market, and wanted to hear WSLCB articulate “a way to manage how hemp and [cannabidiol] CBD products are coming into this industry.” He viewed overproduction of canopy as having implications for “prevention, to enforcement, to just, to social diversity and to conglomeration in this marketplace.” Moberg was “excited for social equity solutions to be implemented” but worried “for people to come in right now” unless changes were “coupled with some sort of control” of production canopy (audio - 7m).
      • See the WSLCB year 2 canopy report created in June 2020. It’s Cannabis Observer’s understanding that the WSLCB canopy measurement team was disbanded after issuance of this report.
    • Craft Cannabis Coalition (CCC). Monroe reported that the CCC didn’t have “any particular legislation that we’re driving, we certainly want to participate in conversations around social equity.” She then mentioned how the federal MORE Act, a decriminalization bill passed by the House during the previous Congress, should encourage consideration of “the impact of...competing on a national scale” and how Washington state cannabis law and regulation could “get in the way of us competing successfully.” Monroe wanted to see lawmakers and the agency considering what “we need to be doing to prepare for the competition on a national level” (audio - 2m).
      • The WSLCB became a charter member of the Cannabis Regulators Association (CANNRA) in November 2020, a “non-partisan organization...created in order to assist federal, state, and local jurisdictions that have approved or are weighing legalization of cannabis.” At publication time, WSLCB Director Rick Garza was the First Vice President of CANNRA.
      • The association’s “Special Committees” include a “Special Committee on Federal Policy and Engagement” and a “Special Committee on Interstate Coordination.”
      • The formation of CANNRA was preceded by and emerged from the Regulators Roundtable events. Cannabis Observer recently obtained the agenda from the last meeting of the Roundtable in August 2020.
    • Consumer Representative. Hirschburg urged those in attendance to “support home grow, I don’t believe it's making any requests of the agency,” and to back “the patient excise tax” legislation. He called on WSLCB to update their adult education and safety webpages for cannabis, “especially around poly-drug use.” Hirschburg also noted there wasn’t “tobacco education on the LCB’s website” as compared to the agency’s cannabis education resources. “I know there’s State resources around tobacco and tobacco health,” he pointed out, but “they don’t seem to be a part of the LCB’s purview. That seems peculiar to me” (audio - 1m, written comments).
    • Patient Representative. Barfield stated that “one of the things coming out about the social equity task force is how big of a disaster 5052 was...and that includes patients” (audio - 3m).
      • His observations since the passage of SB 5052---2015 legislation merging the medical and recreational markets---prompted Barfield to ask “who in the state government is actually standing up for patients.” All of the patients Barfield knew had at least one “debilitating condition” to qualify as medical cannabis patients, which he indicated impeded their capacity to engage with the State. He advised establishing advocates in government to help patients engage around “better access to cannabis and [to] make the system better.”
      • Barfield was supportive of removing the patient excise tax since Washington “is the only state in the entire country” to tax patients, and he wanted an increase in the number of plants patients can grow under the law. “You need to let patients grow six plants or pass home grows,” Barfield said.
      • Barfield believed further RCW changes were needed as “the number two thing that a police officer stops you for in this state is cannabis” because the plant was still treated as “probable cause.”
      • His last suggestion was to “fix the co-op[erative] system,” specifically a “silly rule that you can’t be a mile from a retail shop” and requiring patient co-ops “to be at a home” which could be prohibited by local zoning. Barfield said he had offers from licensed producers to have his co-op move to their farm, adding that collaborative medical grows were common policy and “not controversial. They are world class.”
      • Barfield was invited to testify about cannabis patient needs during a November 2020 legislative work session.

The influence of prevention organizations on WSLCB policy was the focus of a presentation from the agency’s public health liaison and remarks from Cannabis Advisory Council members.

Here are some observations from the Wednesday January 6th Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) Cannabis Advisory Council (CAC) meeting.

My top 3 takeaways:

  • At the CAC meeting, Public Health Education Liaison Sara Cooley Broschart described her “unique” position at WSLCB and discussed the recent roundtables.
    • Broschart took time to “talk about what my role is” at the agency as well as speaking to “some interest from folks” on the roundtables (audio - 8m). 
      • Broschart replaced Mary Segawa as the Public Health Education Liaison in April 2019, “a really unique position” for “a public health person” which “very, very few of the other regulatory agencies in other states have.” Broschart claimed her work helped WSLCB in “understanding impacts...of the substances we regulate to health and the community.” She felt that ‘liaison’ was an apt title for “what my role is.”
      • Broschart felt WSLCB staff “hear so much from the folks we regulate, you all, and others, but the public health stakeholders are often off doing their own thing.” This meant the “particularity of me being able to liaise with them, kind of meeting them where they’re at, is part of the role,” she said.
      • Broschart represented the agency “on alcohol, cannabis, and vapor at the state and national level” in addition to sharing “the status of education and prevention programs with the Board and senior agency management.” She aimed to help increase “knowledge of agency, board, and staff regarding public health” for “agency decision making.”
    • Broschart said “a couple years back” a suggestion was put forward to host prevention outreach events and she chose the description “roundtable” as the gatherings were “a little bit more” informal.
      • At the events, staff conversed with prevention organization representatives, to “learn from each other, and kind of share.” Broschart showed a slide describing goals for the events such as building relationships between agency leadership and the “prevention/public health community,” addressing regional concerns, and allowing advocates to “share experiences, input, and/or knowledge.” She noted that these stakeholders were “not a part of a council such as this one” and had “many, many things on their plate.”
      • Roundtables gave the prevention groups “a moment to pause and really hear from each other,” Broschart explained to the Council, and helped advocates stay “connected with” the agency. She created “a regular mechanism” to host events “twice a year” in “two different regions each time.”
        • Broschart said that in 2019 two in-person roundtables were held, first in January in Spokane, and then in August in Bothell to coincide with the Board’s public meetings in those areas.
        • In 2020, even though things were “shaken up” by the pandemic, June and December roundtables focused on central Washington, “Wenatchee, Ellensburg, and north of there,” and southwest Washington, as well as a summer event that was part of the statewide Prevention Summit, she commented.
        • For 2021, dates were not finalized but Broschart expected consideration would be given to prevention groups in “the [Olympic] peninsula” and southeast Washington.
    • The topics and takeaways Broschart identified from the roundtables included “regional enforcement updates” and concerns, training on engagement with the agency, collaborative discussions, and “presentations by public health/prevention partners to us...be it data or otherwise.”
      • Broschart explained that WSLCB “always did [a] survey” of attendees “to see what the interests of the local prevention and public health partners would be” so that staff could speak to “what they wanted to hear from us.” Broschart told the Council that she had fielded requests “to hear about marijuana advertising...and then, of course, COVID-19 alcohol and marijuana allowances and what that’s looking like.”
      • She said roundtables had evolved to include regional prevention organizations as “a part of planning” and that advocates worked with Broschart during several “planning calls” ahead of the meetings “and really, also, focusing on what they wanted to share with” her and agency leadership. The roundtables were “a two way communication point,” she said.
      • Broschart told the Council members she found it ”interesting” how prevention groups “may be working with you all.” She cited the Vancouver-based Prevent Coalition’s “Secure Your Cannabis campaign” which featured “high level messaging” on safe storage and conversations with kids discouraging “underage cannabis use.” Broschart said there was interest from prevention groups “to bring some of you into this idea” and the campaign exemplified a “great partnership that we can find of prevention folks with licensees.”
  • Broschart then invited questions and comments from the Council, receiving feedback encouraging greater transparency into the agency’s association with prevention stakeholders and recommendations going forward.
    • Caitlein Ryan, Interim Executive Director and Board President of The Cannabis Alliance, reported that she had “registered for the roundtable” because her organization was “involved in partnerships exactly like the one that you’ve described.” However, “the evening before the meeting I was told I was not allowed to attend,” she said, raising an “issue of transparency that I know LCB has been endeavoring to correct.” Ryan felt “collaborative efforts” were crucial “to the prevention community reaching their goals” noting the “collaborative success” between the industry and prevention advocates in packaging and labeling rulemaking during 2019. She “strongly” advised inclusion of the cannabis sector in future roundtables to avoid a perception that WSLCB was “functioning as a gatekeeper to keep these two entities apart from one another” (audio - 3m).
      • Broschart regretted “that was the perception, that was not the intent,” saying the agency met with various stakeholders to be able to “focus on the concerns of that particular body” but that WSLCB would “welcome” more partnerships. She told Ryan she could “bring you two together apart from the roundtables” which had “their explicit purpose,” but that “we’d all like to see more collaboration across all fronts.” Ryan replied that the Cannabis Alliance “already had that connection...but as LCB you are an official host” of the private meetings. She requested the agency then organize “opportunities for our whole industry and prevention to get together...that would be a wonderful goal for LCB.”
    • Bailey Hirschburg, the Council’s consumer representative from the Washington chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (WA NORML), told the Board that prevention roundtables would “be improved by inclusion of a CAC representative going forward” (audio - 3m, written comments).
      • He argued that WSLCB was arranging events where a collection of groups provided “a message to the agency, but they’re also about influencing policy.” Hirschburg said as a citizen observer he’d found numerous events “geared towards the prevention community that are hosted by state agencies.” However, he remarked, roundtables were the first meetings he had encountered which were shielded from the public and “closed...to prevention partners.”
      • Hirschburg did “kind of respect” that “not every meeting at the agency is going to be open, but I think one of the ways we negotiate that” would be to include a council member at subsequent roundtables. He said, “It increases transparency for us” while giving “better feedback” to roundtable attendees whose concerns went beyond regulatory to “legislative questions and questions on industry practices or behavior.” CAC involvement made it more likely “there’s someone there who can speak to those” inquiries, he reasoned, and “gives us a better idea what their agenda is” while avoiding “siloing off” stakeholder information.
      • Hirschburg felt another distinction was that prevention advocates currently had “a staff person at the agency who liaisons with them” to provide their “opinion to the public and to, you know, the leadership of LCB.”
      • Respectful for prevention groups’ “privacy to have that dialogue,” he remained “troubled,” feeling there were “ways to improve” the roundtables. Broadly, Hirschburg viewed CAC participation as “building inroads” among stakeholders while keeping agendas for roundtables “focused on public health issues” rather than being an overbroad “mix of the two stakeholders.”
    • Lukas Barfield, patient CAC representative and member of the Tacoma Area Commission on Disabilities, called attention to the fact that Washington was among the only states to have “a position like this” but that didn’t “necessarily make it a good thing” (audio - 2m).
      • He said that available information supported the view that underage use “has not gone up since cannabis legalization” and there was data supporting “incredible health benefits from medical cannabis.” Barfield said he backed “increased access for medical cannabis” in Washington and wondered if WSLCB could “produce empirical data to actually show that we actually need a position like” Broschart’s. He was surprised that there were “tax dollars spent on this” and that while Washington pulled in “a lot of tax dollars from” legal cannabis, regulators had “secret meetings with prevention people around the state trying to prevent people from getting cannabis.”
      • Barfield called roundtables “an odd situation” and though he supported education around safe cannabis storage he maintained that “on some of these public health outcomes we have study after study that is showing that cannabis is not having a negative effect.” He closed on a note of skepticism asking why an agency regulating adult and patient cannabis access would “need this, this position...as far as cannabis goes”
    • Jeremy Moberg, representing the Washington SunGrowers Industry Association (WSIA), appreciated the update, saying he did “believe that there is the potential for harm” to minors and cannabis consumers around “very high potency concentrates” (audio - 1m).
      • Moberg said that concentrates were “becoming cheaper and cheaper” and were “fully obfuscated” by way of “synthesized cannabinoids coming in from the hemp market.” Moberg was curious if prevention organizations had “an opinion on the state of overproduction and what that potentially leads to” insofar as “cheap access to very high concentrations” in products. He hoped that prevention professionals connected “overproduction” and affordable cannabis concentrates.
        • Hirschburg replied that prevention leaders at events he’d covered “certainly have sounded concerned about” product potency even if they weren’t “aligning it with that industry practice.” He described prevention advocates’ interest in legislation similar to Representative Lauren Davis’ bill limiting cannabinoid concentrations, HB 2546, which was criticized during a January 2020 public hearing. Hirschburg believed that prohibiting items was equivalent to admitting “I only want this cannabis product available in the illicit market.” If prevention organizations did “want to look at how we label cannabis concentrates, how we package them, and how they’re available to the public,” he encouraged them to consider what items they’d “only want available illicitly” if they were removed from the legal market (audio - 1m).

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