WA Senate - Session - Afternoon
(March 5, 2021)

Friday March 5, 2021 1:50 PM - 4:30 PM Observed
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The Washington State Senate (WA Senate) convenes sessions to read, debate, amend, and vote on legislation.

Second and Third Readings

  • SB 5004 - "Providing a tax exemption for medical marijuana patients."

Observations

A bill to exempt registered medical cannabis patients from paying the State excise tax on compliant products received a nod from members of both parties before passage.

Here are some observations from the Friday March 5th Washington State Senate (WA Senate) afternoon session.

My top 3 takeaways:

  • A prominent member of the minority caucus, Senator Ann Rivers, voiced measured support of the bill, viewing it as unlikely to undermine perceived regulatory benefits offered by the patient database.
    • Rivers gave her support for the bill while noting her experience achieving passage of SB 5052, the legislation which merged the medical and adult use cannabis markets in 2015 (audio - 3m, video). 
      • She said that in passing SB 5052 "it was our hope that we would be able to get sort of that wild west of, of the medical marijuana system as it had evolved under control, and harmonize it with our, our recreational, or adult general use, program in our state." Although there’d been “some concern about this bill that it may reintroduce that wild west, I am comfortable, however, because of the original construction of [SB] 5052...and the guidelines around the marijuana registry that we developed, that this bill should” help patients “while maintaining the tight regulation around the recreational market," Rivers explained.
      • "Part of the registry is that it's not just about the patients, it's about the authorizing physicians,” Rivers stated, as SB 5052 had “outlined that the physician had to have a relationship with the patient. We also made the registry searchable so that if we saw one physician who was doing nothing but churning out authorizations---sort of like we noticed with the opioid pill mills---that we would be able to approach that physician about why...they were writing so many.”
      • Rivers concluded that her comfort with SB 5004 was due to the fact that Keiser “kept an eye on the intent of what the Legislature, and actually the people did so many years ago, and the subsequent changes to make sure that we limit our youth access to marijuana while making sure that patients have the medicine that they need at a reasonable cost.
    • In addition to SB 5052 in 2015, Rivers was a legislative leader on cannabis issues for WA Senate Republicans.

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