WSLCB - Cannabis Advisory Council
(April 7, 2021) - Summary

Washington State - Cannabis 2021
[ Event Details ]

The new WSLCB Chair provided more expansive remarks during a public introduction to Cannabis Advisory Council representatives whose comments varied from friendly to confrontational.

Here are some observations from the Wednesday April 7th Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) Cannabis Advisory Council (CAC) meeting.

My top 3 takeaways:

  • Chair David Postman opened up about the learning curve he faced in joining the agency, touching upon transparency, social and economic equity, and his view of the Washington cannabis sector.
    • Director Rick Garza provided an introduction for Postman very similar to remarks given during Postman’s first board meeting on March 17th (audio - 3m). 
    • Regarding his role in Governor Jay Inslee’s administration, Postman jokingly suggested only “the decisions you agree with was I involved in.” While he was still getting up to speed on agency business and “getting to know the staff,” Postman was excited by the opportunity to lead WSLCB but hadn’t planned on it when he left Inslee’s office in November 2020. “I’m not a planner,” he said, reviewing some of his previous experience working for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in addition to writing for The Seattle Times, but “I came though, to the Board with pretty good background.” Postman mentioned his part in the Governor’s deliberations with federal officials which resulted in the Cole Memorandum offering initial guidelines for state-level cannabis legalization and regulation. “And over the years as, as the market has evolved and matured I’ve had the occasion to be involved a little bit,” he noted. WSLCB’s reinvention “between privatization of alcohol sales and then legalization of adult use recreational marijuana” had impressed him. Postman understood that “there’s work to be done” as there was “in every corner of state government...but I think we have the right people in the chairs to do that work” (audio - 3m).
    • Transparency (audio - 5m).
      • Postman stated that he’d been impressed with the agency’s work, particularly Policy and Rules Manager Kathy Hoffman and her staff who had “taken something that’s inherently full of conflict and found the benefit of being really open.” He’d already seen rulemaking “is to the point of a public hearing and the Board and the only comment, if any, is ‘thank you, this was great, what a great process’ and I think that that really is demonstrative” of the benefits of transparency and engagement in agency decision making. The impression Postman had of WSLCB as an entity was “they’re not afraid of controversy. They seek voices and then they work to balance all of that knowing that there is no answer that is going to make everybody happy.”
      • He said he believed in the value of transparency in part because he still considered himself “a reporter, you know, it, it doesn’t really ever go away.” Postman remained as committed to “open meetings, public records, transparency, answering questions, as I was when I was a reporter.” He asserted, “quality journalism improves government,” a view he’d held since being a journalist, “so I’m committed to that” (though “not everybody” he’d encountered in government felt the same). 
      • He’d already encountered difficulty as any meeting on an agency matter with another board member created a quorum and was considered an open and public meeting. But he had met with Board Members Ollie Garrett and Russ Hauge and other agency staff in between being offered the appointment as Board Chair and accepting the role. Postman called former Chair Jane Rushford “the epitome of a public servant” and praised her efforts in facilitating a smooth transition between their tenures as head of WSLCB. “I continue to talk to her, she continues to mentor me,” he said, “and I’m going to do everything I can to carry all of that out in the same fashion she has.”
    • Social and Economic Equity. Postman relayed that “another priority that I know is important to, to many of you, is the issue of equity” in the cannabis industry. He said that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) was “very important to me in a million different ways.”
      • Postman acknowledged active legislation to supplement the responsibilities and scope of the Washington State Legislative Task Force on Social Equity in Cannabis (WA SECTF) and expected the Board and stakeholders to be “working together” to see “how best to implement what the legislature hands us.” As Board Chair he considered DEI “multi-faceted” and inclusive of “staff development” as well as internal and external policies “licenses holders, all of that” in addition to recognizing his own privilege as a White man.
      • He shared a story in which someone interpreted Postman’s professional success as having “all the connections.” Initially defensive, Postman realized that the person’s impression was valid. He’d considered himself to be an outsider questioning the powers that be, but that “depends on how you look at it, I’m not.” He stated that he couldn’t separate his success from societal privilege and could only try to improve himself and not be “threatened by those conversations” (audio - 3m). 
    • Washington Cannabis Sector. Postman conveyed that cannabis was the “most dynamic in what the LCB does right now, it’s very much alive, it’s evolving.” He said the policy had been difficult to “get implemented under the Obama Administration,” and he had “a little nostalgia for those days...they didn’t like marijuana, it was really hard.” Postman remembered Governor Inslee speaking to then-Attorney General Eric Holder to convince him “this was going to work. And it did work” (audio - 3m).
      •  “Washington voters said ‘do this’” and, while Inslee was not a supporter of Initiative 502, Postman claimed the Governor’s main regret almost a decade later was “that he didn’t come to support it sooner because he thinks it’s been a success.”
      • However, “that doesn’t mean it’s done, that doesn’t mean that it’s perfect” Postman said, pointing out “tension about some important things and we’re going to, you know, keep working on those things.” He said the State had avoided a “parade of horribles that people said would come” while officials worked to carry out the voters’ intent - “and we’re limited there.” While I-502 was continually modified, the initiative “sets the groundwork,” Postman explained, and despite having “a governor who wasn’t a huge fan at the beginning,” officials moved forward.
      • Postman admitted there had been fears about cannabis “leakage, and that we could trace [product], and all that, but the market is maturing, it’s evolving.” He thought that WSLCB “and you all, have to reinvent in a way” the state’s cannabis policy “and we face a very different” federal administration and “environment in Washington, D.C.” Postman noted that in the U.S. Congress “there’s much more serious conversation about what [does] national legalization mean?” This was part of the value of the agency participating in the Cannabis Regulators Association (CANNRA), he asserted, saying Garza’s leadership role in the group was a way to “stay in touch with [other legal cannabis jurisdictions] you learn that way, what works, what doesn’t work.” Postman advised people to watch for federal action on cannabis policy “and just keep evolving...and keep reinventing here.”
    • Postman promised to make himself “as accessible as possible,” and stay open to learning from CAC representatives’ experience. He observed that he’d had many meetings as Inslee’s Chief of Staff where he began by telling those he met “I know less about this issue than everybody else at the table” but it wasn’t his job to become the expert on every issue before the Governor. Instead, Postman had approached the position as one about learning and getting “roadblocks out of the way, to get people to be able to find compromise” (audio - 3m).
      • Postman described himself as “generally an informal person” who took “truly constructive criticism and feedback” without being “offended by that.” He didn’t like people “who threaten or are rude.” Although he realized that was present in political discourse, “I think you can do a lot of the hard work without that.”
      • His priority coming onto the Board was to engage his “prime constituency”---agency staff---so they “have what they need to do their job.” Postman also expected WSLCB employees to “do their job professionally and understand...the give and takes of being a public servant.” While supporting staff, he would still “talk about policy disagreements” because that “was how we improve that process...but we’re going to do it in a respectful, open, transparent way.”
      • Postman didn’t expect to lead the agency free from error but assured the group he would “tell you that I’ve made them, and I’ll apologize, and learn, and move on.” He held “hope for the same from others who want to come and talk about issues, particularly tough issues.”
  • Seven CAC members shared their background and priorities with Postman during an at times heated discussion.
    • Bailey Hirschburg, CAC Consumer Representative from the Washington chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (WA NORML, audio - 8m) 
      • Hirschburg welcomed Postman and discussed his background as a volunteer organizer for the I-502 campaign where “the people who were against me the hardest, it seemed...were farther to the left.” Nonetheless, he was a believer in “gradual change, and gradual improvement, and growth.” In NORML, “the nation’s oldest cannabis advocacy organization,” Hirschburg had just become a “Board Member of our state chapter” after being a volunteer and lobbyist for the group.
      • Hirschburg indicated that participation at the January 6th CAC meeting was “at about half power,” attributing the decline to CAC being “a very informal entity, most of the people who want to talk to you are able to...so we kind of have this ad hoc body.” He noted that cannabis consumers previously had “good reason not to speak” with government entities about changing cannabis laws due to a “generational shellshock” from stigmatization for supporting legalization, even encountering “outright hostility...and that’s just starting to abate.” Hirschburg saw CAC as a step towards ending that perception and he suggested “there’s more we can do” by formalizing the membership and responsibilities of the council.
      • “I do think the LCB has tried to move towards [more] transparency,” Hirschburg said, but he wanted the openness of the agency to “continue and improve.” However, he’d also heard “critiques about how much” WSLCB policy analysis could be “cut from other economic judgments, other agricultural judgments...when it’s still not always treated as a crop” and wasn’t treated “in a friendly way for banking and other sorts of issues.” 
      • Hirschburg explained that he “would like to see the agency think about addressing social use and social consumption.” He commented that it had become a difficult topic to bring up because he “didn’t want to bring up another thing that we can’t have” due to pandemic restrictions “but it’s continued to be a very real and salient issue.” Hirschburg said that aside from economic potential, “there are legal and social and health implications,” and asked that WSLCB staff look “at beginning that conversation with special permits and licenses,” which the agency had for alcohol but not cannabis. Cannabis equivalents of existing special permits would “be temporary, would be limited, and would not be like creating lounges, and clubs, and areas of perpetual cannabis consumption,” which Hirschburg said he’d “be OK with eventually.”
      • Postman responded that he knew little about consumption policy but agency leadership was open to “talk about almost anything” and saw “the evolution that’s going on.” He perceived some federal pushback on cannabis as well as a “social evolution that we’re going through” but didn’t think cannabis was “accepted in the same way in society” as alcohol. Hirschburg suggested the agency had a “crucial role in defining what responsible use and acceptable social behavior will be,” something “we’d like to see more” from WSLCB (audio - 1m). 
        • Washington State House Commerce and Gaming Committee (WA House COG) members recently heard about social consumption policies in other states from two cannabis business attorneys.
        • Hirschburg authored HB 1945 (“Concerning sales and sampling of marijuana”) introduced in 2019 to establish cannabis consumption lounges; winery-like vertical integration for producers; special and temporary cannabis sales or event permitting; and associated advertising changes. The bill did not receive a public hearing in WA House COG.
        • At the January 25th WA SECTF meeting, Hirschburg offered public comment on the potential benefits of cannabis consumption endorsements for social equity applicants as “a specific type of business opportunity not available to the wider market.” He believed this would allow equity applicants a market opportunity “similar to the retailers that have been able” to get established for years. Hirschburg advocated for eventually allowing all licensees to apply for social use endorsements after social equity licensees could host events or lounges while showing state officials “consumption will be very limited at first, that it will not be every retailer that’s doing this because they can’t” (audio - 4m).
    • Crystal Oliver, Washington SunGrowers Industry Association (WSIA) Executive Director (audio - 4m)
      • Oliver greeted Postman, saying WSIA represented “the hardest working folks in the industry, our farmers.” She said one positive aspect of the Washington state cannabis sector was product diversity, as “you don’t see that diversity” in other legal cannabis states. However, Oliver was clear that many smaller producers were “struggling to hang on in large part due to the structure of our marketplace.” She suggested conversations “seeking to preserve and increase diversity in the industry” required scrutiny of how “opportunities and power and economic benefits flow through the marketplace” to “identify methods to distribute those to a greater number of participants.”
      • The top issues Oliver identified for her group’s members were:
        • “Establishment of a craft cannabis production license type which would” allow those producers direct sales to consumers through “farmers markets.”
        • An interest “in seeing regulations modified to allow for a true farmers cooperative and shared processing facilities.”
        • Changes to “taxation of cannabis farmers at the state level” so they could “take advantage of standard agricultural tax deductions and exemptions” as Washington did not allow producers to “qualify for any of those exemptions.”
        • “We’d also like to see implementation of the [Washington State Department of Agriculture] WSDA Certified Cannabis program” which would set a state “organic equivalent.” The absence of a recognized standard prevented “organic and regenerative farmers from being able to effectively differentiate themselves on the shelves of our stores.”
        • “We’re really concerned about the impact synthetic delta-8 and synthetic delta-9” tetrahydrocannabinol were having on the state’s legal market. Small producers were being sidelined “in favor of imports and chemically synthesized cannabinoids.”
      • Postman responded on the issue of delta-8-THC, saying the agency was “moving as quickly as it can right now” while reminding participants that “there’s a fence around what our statutory authority is.” He assured Oliver staff were looking at both near term and longer term options, and potential legislative action. Regulation of cannabinoids not yet familiar to policy makers would require a “regulatory system that is dynamic in that way and allows us to do what we think our goal is, which is to protect public health, protect consumers, and have...a market that we can regulate in a sensible way,” Postman said. He promised Oliver and the others “we’re on it” (audio - 2m).
    • Caitlein Ryan, Interim Executive Director and Board President of The Cannabis Alliance (audio - 4m) 
      • Ryan echoed the friendly welcome others had given and explained the Cannabis Alliance was a broad collection of licensees, ancillary businesses, patients, and consumers committed to helping create a “vital, ethical, and sustainable cannabis industry.” She went over some of the priorities for her organization.
        • Ryan explained that the Cannabis Alliance had been advocating for establishment of a “cannabis research commodities commission” that could serve a role common in other commodity commissions to “develop best practices.”
        • The organization backed two patient-focused bills in 2021 “that made it almost to the very end and just needed to be pulled to the floor,” Ryan said. She indicated, “we’re hoping in the second half of the biennium we’ll see some of those move forward.”
          • HB 1105 - "Concerning arrest protections for the medical use of cannabis.”
          • SB 5004 - “Providing a tax exemption for medical marijuana patients.”
        • Ryan noted she and other CAC members had been supportive of home grow rights for adults and there was interest in seeing recent legislation on the topic move forward in 2022.
        • The top issues Ryan expected WSLCB staff and the Board to take up were:
      • Postman relayed that he hadn’t heard about the idea of a cannabis research commission and found it an interesting possibility. He asked that Ryan talk with him about the bill ahead of the 2022 legislative session (audio - 1m). 
    • Joanna Monroe, Executive Director of the Craft Cannabis Coalition (CCC) (audio - 2m) 
      • Monroe thanked Postman for convening the meeting and said her organization’s mission was “to protect and promote the craft nature of cannabis in Washington state.” Describing herself as a “recovering attorney and businesswoman,” she was also still learning about cannabis as an industry. Monroe stated many CCC members had felt like “they’re getting their feet on the ground and their businesses are growing - and then COVID hits and we have a lot of other issues we dealt with last year.”
      • Members had concerns about “big industry disruption” as well as:
      • Monroe indicated that, for the moment, “where we can support our other organizations we would weigh in, but really just kind of leaning back, listening, and then engaging as needed.”
      • Postman asked for a better idea of “what craft means in the context of cannabis, I know what it [is] in distillery and beer.” Monroe said she’d recognized that CCC included “some of the larger player[s] on our board.” The group defined ‘craft’ as a marketplace having “diverse craft-type products” and an “extraordinary consumer experience and we think it’s important to preserve that.” She’d found that even businesses “doing a lot of revenue” were often “still relatively mom-and-pop” and she thought “60% of the license holders’ businesses have operations with 11 employees or less.” Monroe added they were particularly interested in what would happen to the state’s legal cannabis sector as “it becomes decriminalized federally,” and wondered were “we all going to be wiped out in five years by Costco?” (audio - 2m)
    • Aaron Bossett, Black Cannabis Commission Founder (audio - 8m) 
      • Bossett said he wasn’t a member of the licensed cannabis industry and had been “invisible to the LCB and the state legislature” for the last decade despite being the “rep for the Black community that is trying to get equity within this state.” He noted that earlier in the day WSLCB Enforcement Officers had participated in a law enforcement sweep where “40 Black men were arrested for cannabis...we’re talking about state sponsored genocide at this point.” Bossett didn’t appreciate hearing about “diversity of products” at the same time “families are being harmed and blood is being spilled at the hands of your lack of legislative policy activism.”
      • While Bossett had heard talk about social equity in cannabis, “nothing has changed, there’s still no pathways to ownership, equity means ownership, social means everybody.” He observed that WA SECTF included “senators that represented [a] Republican Party that their entire life has been an obstruction to the Black community, and somehow they have a say in what’s right for an equity program for the Black community.”
      • Bossett insisted he had “one of the largest organizations sitting at this table by far”: a cannabis industry “outside of the legal industry” that generated revenue for Washington’s African American communities. He said there were cannabis speakeasies and delivery networks “in all the moratorium cities,” jurisdictions which had relied on “the propaganda of illegal activities and public safety using Black and Brown people as a front to keep us out.” There were also “farmers markets that are operating currently...we’re not asking for permission anymore.”
      • Despite Washington making significant revenue from cannabis, Bossett noted “Black people are still locked out” and WA SECTF “was an absolute joke and a harmful bill. A bad bill is better than no bill, and that bad bill has put my community back another six years from being legally involved.” He pledged to work with WSLCB officials who wanted to remedy the situation “but at this point I have no trust, no faith, or anything in this state” or the state’s cannabis regulations.
      • Bossett called out The Seattle Times for the framing of an article that day where “every time the cannabis industry was talked about...the word cannabis was used, but when it got to social equity and Black people the word marijuana was used.” He considered it evidence of “the unconscious bias that is constantly displayed” even as people asked the State to stop using the term. Bossett identified other derogatory terms that if he used “everybody would be up in the arms and say ‘hey, don’t use those words.’” By contrast, he commented that the word ‘marijuana’ had been historically associated with racism in furthering cannabis stigmatization and prohibition targeting racial minority groups. Bosset wondered “why is it that I have to pass policy for you to stop using words like marijuana but you can sit here right on the phone and say ‘watch your language,’” when he’d used other offensive words moments earlier. Postman replied that “we are in the process of doing exactly what you’re saying. We are getting rid of references to marijuana.” Bossett disagreed, believing that a word change in State rules and statutes would “take committees and task forces and all this other stuff.”
      • Reiterating that an unregulated Black cannabis sector had already flourished in Washington, Bossett felt that WSLCB leadership, and specifically Garrett, “has never done anything in the Black community to help the Black community, to advise the Black community, give information to the Black community.” He asked when there could be “a connection and a relationship between this genocidal force that we call LCB and the State Patrol against my community.”
      • Bossett felt “invisible” to the agency despite having been “nominated” to represent the African American community to WSLCB. So, he encouraged regulators to “catch us if you can, we’ve created blockchain and smartchain contracts, we have delivery systems, we have farmers markets...we don’t have time to ask, we don’t have time to waste.” He was open to helping Postman and agency leaders to make “super realistic radical change...but if we’re going to set up another task force and committees and keep talking about it, don’t call me.”
      • Postman responded that he understood what Bossett was saying, adding “message received” (audio - <1m).
    • Lukas Barfield, Patient Representative and member of the Tacoma Area Commission on Disabilities (audio - 7m) 
      • Barfield echoed the comments of disproportionate enforcement faced by African Americans. “I’ve seen my Black brothers and friends go to jail because of cannabis,” he said, and knew there were life long consequences to any cannabis arrest. Having been “a cannabis activist my entire life,” he said he’d moved to Washington from Alabama, writing for Ganjapreneur and hosting “a cannabis radio show on Radio Tacoma 101.9 LPFM.” As a patient and disabled person, Barfield explained that he thought and talked a lot about equity “not just social equity having to do with race but disability or equitable access.”
      • Barfield considered the “big problem right now in Washington state cannabis” to be the use of the former Cole Memo “as a club to smash one of the best medical cannabis systems in the world.” He said patient cooperatives had been common in medical cannabis systems but “the Cole Memo and the LCB came in and smashed it” following the choice to merge the medical and adult markets via legislation in 2015.
      • He didn’t feel the regulated cannabis market was a great innovation considering “cannabis has been around for thousands of years.” Barfield blamed the pharmaceutical industry for law enforcement targeting of racial minorities because cannabis was “competition” to their medicines. He shared Bossett’s dismay that officials would say they support social equity as he felt very few had taken action to improve the situation.
      • Barfield said that “the second thing that the police can interfere in your life about is cannabis” and the plant was still being used “to arrest Black people.” He also felt Asian citizens and nationals were being targeted through cannabis enforcement: “we could stop all the private war on Asians right now, but we still got the public war on Asians via the police.”
      • A common perception Barfield said people had of his home state of Alabama was “backwards, behind the times” yet “Washington state is quickly becoming the Alabama of cannabis....we are becoming the backwater.” He shared that addresses for medical cannabis cooperatives had been getting released into “the public sphere” and asked WSLCB to “look into that because that’s a big safety issue” for patients.
      • Barfield said a friend of his, Melissa Knot, noted that “propriety, or being...proper, is the actions of the privileged” and that he didn’t think Postman or the agency should “ask people that they have to act a certain way for you to listen to them all the time, it just gets a bit much.”
      • He added that SB 5004 on excise tax relief for patients was “tanked. The LCB kind of helped tank it, you guys stalled it.” Barfield felt that stakeholders were not being helped or looked out for by agency staff, “and I stand in solidarity with Mr. Bossett...let's get the police out of cannabis.”
      • Postman thanked Barfield before speaking to several of his points (audio - 7m):
        • Expecting public speakers to avoid name calling wasn’t the same as “not listening to them,” Postman argued, considering it the same as requests by others to use respectful language. “It doesn’t mean you can’t speak, it doesn’t mean you can’t be heard.”
        • Postman also felt credit was due to officials like himself “who did invent this system” of legal cannabis approved by voters since “we had to implement it.” He thought it was the work of regulators that kept federal officials “from coming to literally arrest LCB people and people running stores.” Postman considered the work of Colorado and Washington policymakers to have “[shown] people we can have a legal cannabis system” which to most “looked like radical change.”
        • While there was “a lot of work to do,” Postman believed agency staff and those in the industry “invented a good legal system” that worked without “federal interference and a lot of people said we couldn’t.” He stated that he had yet to encounter a topic WSLCB wouldn’t discuss.
        • Postman said he was “with you on a lot of” concerns about police abuse, but suggested that the agency had “changed the way they went about enforcement in a real, substantive way, and we now have a new Director of Security [Chandra Brady], not a ‘Chief’ of Security. We have a group of compliance officers who aren’t armed.” He remarked that Garza and agency leaders evaluated the problem and took action following adoption of legislation mandating the review and reform of agency enforcement in 2019.
        • Postman “wouldn’t have taken the job” as WSLCB Chair if he’d felt cannabis laws and rules were settled, assuring the group he would keep working even when “there’s going to be people who are angry at us...and I don’t think there’s a way around that.” Nonetheless, he said the agency wouldn’t “shy away from it either.”
        • Barfield felt most of the criticisms around the legalization of cannabis “are based in racist fear” and he wanted people to “stand up to those fears” and not support federal activity to “smash all of these Black businesses. If you want to come arrest us, come on, but we’re going to be on the right side of history here.”
    • Brooke Davies, Washington CannaBusiness Association (WACA) Deputy Director and Associate Lobbyist (audio - 2m) 
      • Davies welcomed Postman to the agency and promised to send him WACA’s legislative goals and a “position paper we wrote on the social equity work that’s being done.” She remarked that her group’s members were most interested in:
        • Changes to “over prescriptive” cannabis rules around traceability, packaging and labeling, and sampling practices. Davies wanted agency staff to “see which ones are really there to preserve public safety and which ones we may be able to streamline a little bit.”
        • Davies said her organization was “very interested in the delta-8 conversation along with other cannabinoids” to ensure that “some of the problems that happened with CBD don’t happen again.”
        • Davies added that WACA played a role in supporting enforcement reform legislation in 2019 and “we’re really excited to see what’s come of that and what the agency has done” because members were still reporting some “overreaching enforcement actions” by WSLCB agents.
  • Board Members Ollie Garrett and Russ Hauge shared brief remarks, noting a potential CAC meeting after the conclusion of the legislative session.
    • Garrett thanked CAC representatives for attending and said to expect “our first meeting probably within the next week or two after the closing of session” on April 25th. She asked that members “think about agenda items and what it is you want us to go over.” Garrett told the group to look for communication from Executive Assistant Dustin Dickson on the specific dates and time frame to put forward agenda topics (audio - 1m).
    • Hauge was also grateful for representatives' attendance, observing that “all these discussions are discussions that we’ve had, they are building in intensity” and that he would be “committed to addressing them just as you are.” He noted that, in advance of joining the Board, Postman had asked, “how can we have a board with two gray haired White guys out of three?” Hauge said the men “recognize our privilege, we recognize that we have a lot of work to do, and particularly with Ollie showing us the way, I’m committed to following the path that we set which I think is the right one” (audio - 1m).

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