WSLCB - Board Caucus
(February 9, 2021)

Here are some observations from the Tuesday February 9th Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) Board Caucus.

My top 3 takeaways:

• Anticipating recommendations from the social equity task force, Policy and Rules Manager Kathy Hoffman said she would be introducing a rulemaking project to "remove unnecessary barriers to entry" for license applicants with cannabis criminal history records (audio - 2m).
  • Hoffman announced that she planned to present a CR-101 to “open up WAC 314-55-040, that pertains to criminal history that may prevent a cannabis license applicant from receiving or keeping such a license” at the February 17th board meeting.
  • Staff would “re-evaluate current criminal history background checks, standards, and criteria in an effort to remove unnecessary barriers to entry," she said, focusing on people “disproportionately impacted by cannabis criminalization.”
  • The rulemaking project would “support socially equitable conditions" by ensuring that consideration of criminal backgrounds were designed to allow “fair and meaningful access to economic opportunities” which had been “afforded by cannabis legalization,” Hoffman stated. She called changing the rules “a step towards...the overarching social equity work that we’ve been doing. And it’s something that the agency can do now.”
    • The impact of cannabis convictions on license applicants was a concern for members of the Washington State Legislative Task Force on Social Equity in Cannabis (WA Task Force on Social Equity in Cannabis). WSLCB staff told task force members the rulemaking effort was being considered on January 25th.

• Hoffman reviewed the deliberative dialogue sessions on the Quality Control (QC) Testing and Product Requirements rulemaking project (audio - 3m). 
  • Following an initial dialogue with patient and consumer panelists on January 28th, WSLCB Policy and Rules staff hosted a panel of producer and processor licensees on February 4th which included “157 attendees registered” and as many as 107 present during the session. She’d found the event to be “an excellent conversation" executed “as smoothly as we could have anticipated given our virtual environment.” 
  • Hoffman noted there were technical difficulties during the meeting as well as efforts by attendees to ask questions of WSLCB staff in attendance rather than the panelists. However, “for the most part we’re getting some really good questions,” she said. Hoffman added that staff were working to post the audio and chat log from the dialogue “up on our outward facing web page...in the next couple days.”
    • Policy and Rules Coordinator Casey Schaufler talked about technical difficulties during the session (audio - 2m).
    • Hoffman made no mention of an advance coordination kerfuffle which apparently warranted a response from the agency prior to the second dialogue.
  • Regarding the licensee deliberative dialogue event, Hoffman said “the conversation with the five of them was so robust that we didn’t get to all the questions that we planned to.” And so, “with their approval and permission,” she intended to reconvene the group to discuss three remaining questions in “a session with just the panelists and myself still moderating, record it, and then address those three additional questions, and add it as a supplement” to the February 4th materials. Hoffman explained that a "tier 1 licensee that we really are interested” in hearing from hadn’t been able to participate for the entire session due to technical “challenges” and was working with Hoffman to “work up some written responses” before reconvening the panel (audio - 3m).
  • Hoffman was looking forward to the next deliberative dialogue with a panel of cannabis testing lab representatives scheduled for February 11th.

• Board Member Ollie Garrett mentioned media coverage of home cultivation legislation, HB 1019. She noted Homegrow Washington Co-Founder Don Skakie’s photo in a Seattle Times article describing “momentum” supporters of the proposal were gaining in the legislative process (audio - 1m)
  • Skakie testified in support of the bill at the first public hearing on January 15th.
  • HB 1019 was slated for a fiscal committee public hearing in the Washington State House Appropriations Committee (WA House APP) later that afternoon on Tuesday February 9th.
  • See the article’s map comparing home cultivation policies in legal cannabis states.