The Week Ahead
(November 23, 2020)

Fork in the Road

As most events were cancelled for the holidays, we encourage stakeholders and policymakers to reflect on how far we’ve come - and verify we’re still heading in the right direction together.

Here’s a look at cannabis-related policymaking events on the calendar in the week ahead.

Monday November 23rd

On Monday at 10am PT, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) COVID Legal/Policy/Rules Meeting was scheduled to recur.

  • [ Event Details ]
  • Agency staff leadership, Board Chair Jane Rushford, and Assistant Attorney General Bruce Turcott convene multiple times per week via webinar to discuss policy-related questions raised in the context of the pandemic.
  • Originally having met daily every work day, the schedule of meetings was shifted to 3x per week (M, W, F) on June 10th.
  • It’s Cannabis Observer’s understanding that the cadence for these internal meetings has been further stepped down, but we have not yet been able to confirm the current schedule.

Tuesday November 24th

On Tuesday at 10am PT, the weekly WSLCB Board Caucus was scheduled to recur.

Wednesday November 25th

On Wednesday at 10am PT, the WSLCB COVID Legal/Policy/Rules Meeting was scheduled to recur.

The bi-weekly WSLCB Board Meeting was cancelled.

The weekly WSLCB Executive Management Team (EMT) meeting was cancelled.

  • [ Event Details ]
  • The last 10 regularly scheduled EMT meetings have been cancelled. Although still listed as a weekly event, the Board had indicated these meetings would be hosted monthly through the end of the calendar year. At publication time, the EMT last convened on September 16th after a 7-month hiatus, did not meet in October or November, and had met 4 out of 48 possible occasions in 2020.
  • I addressed the Board about transparency amidst the pandemic on July 8th, specifically asking the agency to bring back the EMT meetings. I found myself addressing the Board again on that subject during general public comment at the close of last week’s Special Board Meeting, and told them “in order for your stakeholders and the public to be meaningfully engaged we need good information about what the Board is thinking and doing.” Well-informed, engaged stakeholders help create better policymaking outcomes.
  • We also believe well-informed, engaged stakeholders help avert policymaking mistakes. During a November 12th advocacy training webinar for “community prevention and public health partners” which was not advertised to licensees, Cannabis Observer learned that Policy and Rules Manager Kathy Hoffman had undertaken the drafting of a new interpretative policy statement regarding Delta-8-THC. We had previously obtained access to WSLCB email records which shed some light on the potential policy change and published our reconstruction of events in the hopes of mitigating unintended consequences. But we have to ask: why would this kind of policymaking be undertaken in the dark? More troubling still, is this the kind of engagement with stakeholders and subject matter experts we should expect from the WSLCB Policy and Rules Team now that it has been designated the sole source for policy interpretations across the agency?
  • Questions were also raised about how much the WSLCB Policy and Rules Team wants to hear from stakeholders and the public during last week’s Special Board Meeting. In his defensive prebuttal before the public hearing even began, Policy and Rules Manager Casey Schaufler disdainfully discarded comments received “without a proposal of additional language to frame it, or a verifiable, data-supported analysis.” We’ve heard similar calls for comments to include alternative rule language for quite some time, but never so forcefully and indicative of a privileging of certain “substantive” comments over others. We are not lawyers here at Cannabis Observer---and assume most stakeholders are not either---but we’re confident the Administrative Procedure Act does not say public comments must be framed in legal language to merit equal consideration by regulators. For an agency struggling with accusations of systemic racism, this seems like a problematic policy to promote.
  • Bringing back the Executive Management Team meetings would be a good step towards renewed transparency after the agency was forced to take some steps back due to the pandemic. Complacency in the diminished status quo has already begun revealing itself as an unwise dawdle. Cannabis policymaking is hard, so we all have a degree of compassion for legislators and regulators tasked with forging wholly new statutory and rule frameworks for an extremely complicated plant and the abundance that springs forth from it. But this particular moment calls for tough love and encouragement for everyone to take a look in the mirror to verify we’re still heading in the right direction together.

Thursday November 26th

The State of Washington recognizes the Thanksgiving holiday. However, on November 15th, the Governor issued Proclamation 20-25.8 which declared the following restrictions on social gatherings:

  1. Indoor Social Gatherings with people from outside your household are prohibited unless they (a) quarantine for fourteen days (14) prior to the social gathering; or
     (b) quarantine for seven (7) days prior to the social gathering and receive a negative COVID-19 test result no more than 48-hours prior to the gathering. A household is defined as individuals residing in the same domicile.
  2. Outdoor Social Gatherings shall be limited to five (5) people from outside your household.

Given worrisome trends, Cannabis Observer encourages you to sacrifice your holiday gatherings rather than your loved ones.

The monthly WSLCB Marijuana Traceability Project (MTP) Integrator Work Session was cancelled.

Friday November 27th

The State of Washington recognizes Native American Heritage Day.

On Friday at 10am PT, the WSLCB COVID Legal/Policy/Rules Meeting was cancelled.