WSLCB - Board Caucus
(November 1, 2022) - Discussion with Alison Holcomb

I-502 - 10 Year Anniversary - Alison Holcomb
[ Event Details ]

A conversation with the author of the state’s legalization initiative provided history and context around the first decade of WSLCB policymaking, along with insights for the next.

Here are some observations from the Tuesday November 1st Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) Board Caucus.

My top 4 takeaways:

  • After hearing Holcomb’s impression of how the agency had implemented the initiative, board members asked questions about the distinction between legalization and decriminalization, cannabis prevention and research strategies, along with youth engagement approaches.
    • Postman offered the first query: “How does what we're doing today fit what you thought when you started work on that initiative?” (audio - 2m, WSLCB video, TVW video)
      • “While the specifics may look different than anything we could have imagined, the core of what has evolved over the last decade…seems consistent with the aims when we sat down to begin drafting,” Holcomb commented. She remembered that the “only goal was to pass a law that would end the criminalization of cannabis growing, selling, and—first and foremost—possessing and consuming.” Stating that “ACLU of Washington has always viewed all drug prohibition policies as grounded in racism,” Holcomb relayed the motivation to “pass a law that first and foremost would withstand the scrutiny of the federal government. We had no idea whether or not the federal government would allow Initiative 502 to actually be implemented, and we're very pleased that [they] did.”
      • Contemplating the resulting legal marketplace, Holcomb said “what resonates most deeply for me is how successful we were in crafting a…measure that would give the board a great deal of flexibility and encourage the board to include community perspectives in how this industry needed to evolve” within the constraints of federal cannabis prohibition. She wanted policy to continue to be developed “to address those racist underpinnings of cannabis prohibition, and start to address the inequities that our communities have suffered as a result.”
    • Postman saw a key factor was “to remove this criminality which was being abused…and disproportionately based on race,” asking if there’d been “no way to advance that cause of decriminalizing…or making that more equitable even without legalization?” (audio - 5m, WSLCB video, TVW video)
      • Viewing this as “partly right,” Holcomb remarked that there had been talk that advocates “pursue simple decriminalization of possession” or decriminalizing “all activities relating to cannabis. So, decriminalizing growing cannabis, decriminalizing rolling joints for your friends and selling it to them, or giving it to them…simply remove the criminal laws that related to cannabis.” This would have skipped any attempt “to stand up a regulatory system to govern how cannabis could be produced and distributed for commercial purposes,” leaving that entirely to elected officials, she suggested. At a minimum, an initiative that decriminalized possession would stop “the overwhelming majority of arrests that are inflicted on individuals,” added Holcomb. 
      • “We could have just done that but we were at this interesting time in history,” Holcomb argued, since in 2009 “the federal government had recently stated that it had no interest in going after people who were in compliance with state medical cannabis laws and pioneering entrepreneurs across the country saw that as a bit of a green light to…stand up a very robust industry.” In Washington state, she pointed out how “numerous co-ops and clubs that proliferated across communities with neon cannabis leaf signs and started to create some friction with certain neighborhoods who [were] concerned about what appeared to them to be less of an authentic medical cannabis system, and one that” many questioned “is this really a medical transaction that's happening?” Holcomb explained that ACLU WA first approached this issue in 2011 by attempting to pass legislation, SB 5073, that would license and regulate medical dispensaries. Passed by the legislature, she commented that “it was line item vetoed by the governor at that time, Governor [Christine] Gregoire, out of concerns that the federal government would come in and potentially arrest and prosecute state employees who were trying to implement this law.”
      • After dispensary regulations in the law were removed by Gregoire, Holcomb said the “feeling by many of the people that had worked on that was one of frustration and the perception that there was a lack of understanding that the intent here was to create a responsible regulatory system for a product that was not going away regardless of whether people were using it for medicinal purposes or for recreational purposes.” Holcomb and others began looking at “a more productive way to regulate it and try to address the public health concerns that we have” rather than treating cannabis “as though its consumption is a crime and you should be arrested, prosecuted, and saddled with lifelong hurdles to engagement in society.” This was the stage at which she and others “decided to pivot from an idea that we would simply try to decriminalize possession” or “a regulatory system just for medical uses of cannabis” and towards drafting “the first full legalization and regulation model in the United States.”
    • Board Member Jim Vollendroff mentioned “early on conversations” with Holcomb, saying he’d been impressed with “the focus on public health and…how can we regulate this in a positive way.” He said this included the “recognition that we wanted to keep product out of the hands of young people and I really appreciate that and have been impressed with the industry since I've become a member of the board” as he’d found unanimous agreement “on keeping product out of the hands of young people.” He called attention to language in I-502 “around investments in prevention, research, and treatment” and encouraged Holcomb to share “thoughts about where we are now versus what was in the original [initiative]” (audio - 6m, WSLCB video, TVW video).
      • Holcomb started off by thanking Vollendroof for prior “excellent advice that you gave us, and how to think about how do you build in the guideposts for how we continue to develop and refine increasingly effective strategies for prevention of especially youth initiation of cannabis use, and any intoxicating substance or mood altering substance.” She believed the state had “vastly under invest[ed] in prevention,” stating that during the I-502 campaign “the best research that we were looking at proved that every dollar spent on prevention was worth $7 spent in incarcerative strategies or even in treatment.” Holcomb continued by suggesting that stopping youth access was “critical…and also, and perhaps even more so, helping youth make the choice that they're not really interested in initiating cannabis use as young people.” She shared that the tobacco-focused truth.com campaign served as “a touchstone” for the kind of prevention effort she’d envisioned for cannabis, a “gold standard strategy for figuring out how to engage youth” and leveraging “what is actually persuasive to them” so that they “protect their own health.”
      • Instead, Holcomb had encountered “a constant battle every year to make sure that more funding isn't funneled off” by lawmakers to “police the marketplace and/or other policing outside of the marketplace.” She considered I-502 to be “about ending what's bad for our communities and shifting us to strategies that are good for our communities. And continuing to focus on punishment and incarceration and penalties has never proven to be good for communities, especially in the context of people's use of intoxicating substances.” Holcomb added that “I don't need to tell you that ‘just say no’ didn't work,” and she felt “we need to be investing more money in testing, piloting every new strategy that we can…focused on how do we protect and promote health, and assessing and evaluating whether or not strategies we've adopted are actually successful.” The original calls for research and prevention spending in I-502 were partnered with an “investment in third party evaluations, we put that with Washington State Institute for Public Policy. I think that can be shifted in other places too,” so long as policy makers and regulators were “holding ourselves accountable for the policies that we're testing.”
    • Next, Vollendroff inquired about the involvement of young people in WSLCB policy development, “an area that I have really focused on in the last ten years, and I'm wondering if the ACLU involves young people in public policy discussions. And if so, what value do you see in agencies” like WSLCB featuring “young people in public policy discussions related to cannabis, alcohol, tobacco, and vaping products” (audio - 2m, WSLCB video, TVW video).
      • Holcomb described how ACLU WA had youth policy areas and staff were “engaging with them around juvenile detention, engaging with them around school discipline, and policies in their schools that are marginalizing students.” However, on drug policy, she recognized the organization dialogue was with “primarily the adults who are working with youth.” Holcomb was receptive to the “idea of engaging directly with youth in assessing these policy choices because they're the ones that we're trying to craft the policy for and if we're not hearing their perspectives, we're going to continue to fail or at least stub our toes and not deliver everything that we could.”
    • Board Member Ollie Garrett was curious about youth prevention effectiveness, “are you aware of the difference, if any, with youth and between cannabis and liquor?” (audio - 2m, WSLCB video, TVW video)
  • Questions turned to changes to the regulated system, touching upon vertical integration, the attempted merger of medical cannabis into the regulated marketplace, implementation of a social equity program, and additional cannabis licensure by WSLCB.
    • Director Rick Garza brought up vertical integration, observing that while he’d not spoken with Holcomb before I-502 passed, they’d met afterwards “to understand what the intent was.” Considering the states voting on whether to legalize cannabis on November 8th, and that there had still been no federal law regarding state legal cannabis, he found the “biggest question that we get from folks” pertained to “certain aspects of the initiative” that were different than other states. Specifically, I-502 didn’t “allow vertical integration, so that's very unique to what the other states are doing,” Garza commented, adding “this was based on the tied house policies the state used to have for liquor.” He said, “you had a medical program that was totally vertically integrated, and yet the initiative…did not do that, which meant it would take three years to merge both.” Garza attributed the lack of vertical integration with creating “some struggles for us here” (audio - 6m, WSLCB video, TVW video).
      • According to Holcomb, the motivation for that business structure “was to take as conservative and protective an approach as possible to minimizing the risk of exploitation of the consumer and incentives to increase excessive use by the consumer.” She continued, stating the rule “was based on trying to prevent alcohol manufacturers from owning the bars where customers would come in and maybe get a free sandwich along with whatever alcoholic product they purchased, and that the alcohol manufacturers had a direct interest in increasing excessive use of alcohol by their customers.” Aware that “we're seeing increasingly large cannabis businesses across the country,” she felt limits around vertical integration might make sense,  but “there's a difference in the current cannabis industry in that we don't see on-site consumption in social clubs for example, or in bars, and so the analogy is imperfect.”
      • Moreover, a “relatively limited number of retailer licenses available” meant that “vertical integration really cuts into our ability to create an economically equitable marketplace,” argued Holcomb, as licensed retailers exercised “lopsided power over who can actually make a living” in the legal cannabis sector. This put “producers and processors…a bit at the mercy of retailers with respect to what they can charge for their product, because there are only so many retail outlets that these producers and processors can sell to,” she remarked.
      • Holcomb perceived the market structure in Washington state as favoring “the investor-owner…and what I would love to see is for our marketplace to evolve to have…more owner-operators, and I would say that it's time to evolve” tied house rules, “specifically to have the legislature pass the craft license option.” This would allow for “a cannabis producer actually delivering their goods through their own outlet. That's a model that would allow for greater economic equity within the marketplace, and also avoids the risk of having very large investor-owner businesses pushing product…in the valuation of profit over long-term relationships with customers.”
      • Garza considered her advice similar to how state officials had reformed laws and rules around wineries and breweries during the 1970s. He talked about “a retailer in Yakima and Vancouver a couple of years ago that shared with us because we don't allow vertical integration, that we have much more product available. Because when you, when you grow, you process, and you retail typically that's only your product that you're concerned about selling and that compared to Oregon and other states the SKUs [stock-keeping unit] in our, in our stores out number most of the other states with respect to products. So consumers are happy when they walk into our retail shop that there's a lot to choose from.”
    • Postman turned the conversation towards the question of “how the pre-existing medical system would integrate into this new strictly regulated recreational” market and generally “how was it supposed to work?” (audio - 4m, WSLCB video, TVW video)
      • Holcomb began with her “personal bias that came from having been a criminal defense attorney for over a decade and representing a large number of people who are in the…illicit cannabis industry at the time.” She’d seen “a great number of medical patients who were trying to navigate the rules about what was okay for them to produce at home, where they could go if they were unable through disability or their living circumstances to produce their own cannabis for medicinal purposes, and frankly witnessing what felt to me like exploitation of patients who are in very vulnerable positions.” Holcomb knew of “wonderful people who were operating cannabis co-ops, and doing so very ethically and lovingly, frankly, with respect to both the product that they were making available to patients and…finding a way to get the product to the patients who needed it.” However, she also encountered a “small handful of people who are more interested in taking advantage of a situation” where there was legal “latitude that was given by some local governments to people operating in these gray margins of the medical cannabis industry.”
      • After attempting to legislate and license dispensaries in order to have regulators “monitoring for the use of pesticides and producing cannabis,” Holcomb said she’d “expanded from regulating the medical cannabis market to a ballot measure that would create just a straight legal marketplace for all adults. The idea was that yes…anybody that wanted to run a medical cannabis industry could also get licensed in this area and I think what evolved over time was a recognition that there should be some special regulations and opportunities to get licensed for people that were specifically interested in medical quality products and providing information…and greater levels of assistance to patients.”
    • Digging further into the regulation of the medical cannabis sector, Postman felt “because the medical was operating in that gray market area when we started to move to the 502 market,” he suggested it incentivized “some in law enforcement to go really heavy on that gray market.” This created “an advantage to them prior to 502 because they could operate in that gray area, but then it didn't have any of the protections, obviously, of regulation,” observed Postman. He said, “we've tried both in terms of a equity question…and can we get licenses in the hands of some of these people that were operating the collectives, and also continuing to do some of the things that are in law about what we should have available for medical consumers” (audio - 4m, WSLCB video, TVW video).
      • Holcomb, based on her “personal interactions,” said she’d most often seen two types of medical cannabis providers, those “operating in the spirit of the latitude that was given to medical cannabis,” as well as “a different category of people that was much smaller, but that I viewed as frankly being a bit predatory towards medical patients.” However, she was also aware of people “that were straight up cannabis producers and sellers, and maybe some of that what they were selling was to medical patients, maybe some of it wasn't, but they they were not trying to take advantage of medical patients, they were providing this product that's in demand to people who wanted it and they were taking advantage of what” legal protection was available to them. Holcomb considered such people to be “as deserving of the opportunity to take advantage of the legal marketplace as anybody else, and they make excellent arguments that they above others should be prioritized because they've been in this marketplace for so long” while having experienced the “stress” of the cannabis business and accrued customer loyalty.
      • This was a topic “where the board has a lot of power,” Holcomb conveyed, “when we drafted 502 we drafted it so that all criminal penalties and all civil penalties are removed from anything that the board says, ‘if you are in compliance with board regulations, if you're validly licensed by the board you are not subject to criminal and civil penalties.’” She stated this was in “the introductory language to every licensing provision for producer, processor, and retailer it starts with ‘whatever the board says if it's okay with them it's not a crime and there's no civil penalty applies.’ So, you have all the latitude in the world.”
      • Holcomb further suggested board members had the authority to set the number of available retail licenses “or whether or not there should be a cap on licenses…I would encourage the board to really examine how far it can press to bring more people in and give more people the opportunity to benefit from the ongoing expansion of the marketplace.”
    • Garrett was interested in Holcomb’s impression of the final rules in the social equity rulemaking project passed by the board on October 12th, however Holcomb wasn’t familiar with the specifics and promised to submit her feedback after reviewing the rulemaking documents (audio - 1m, WSLCB video, TVW video).
    • Vollendroff sought more insight on “the relationship between the retailers and the customer and I've been thinking a lot about budtenders.” He’d been considering the “potential between working with budtenders and the community around literacy and around high THC concentration products and what are the implications of those?…I don't know if the role of budtenders was ever part of 502…but your thoughts about that would be interesting.” He also wanted to hear any further thoughts Holcomb had on “where we're most powerful and all that kind of stuff and then should we consider the number of licenses?” (audio - 4m, WSLCB video, TVW video)
      • “I'll answer the second question first because it's a short answer and absolutely I think it's time for us to expand the number of licenses and really start to think more broadly about how we make a more equitable marketplace,” said Holcomb. She was aware of “issues with landlord dynamics and the power that they wield over these businesses. Some of this would have to be done through legislation but is there a reason why we shouldn't experiment with state acquisition and development of properties and fair leasing programs that would address the horrible lopsided leasing proposals that are out there from some of these landlords who realize how hard it is to find a location under the law.”
      • Holcomb was also supportive of expanded budtender engagement, as “the best way that we make connections with people is face-to-face, eye-to-eye, having conversations, developing relationships over time” and hoped the sector prioritized “educated, invested, budtenders who are establishing long-term relationships with customers.” She acknowledged it related to “my bias in favor of owner-operators over investor-owners, people that actually have skin in the game, that actually care about their customers and not just based on what Yelp reviews say, but are really there to establish relationships.” In Holcomb’s view, this represented “one of the best ways to create [a] trusted education program” which relied upon “trusted messengers talking to the audiences that we're trying to reach, and who's more trusted than your not judgmental budtender that just wants to make sure you get product that you like and that you have a good experience.”
      • Postman agreed that they’d heard similar remarks from public health officials “that there's only so much you can do by regulation, or labeling, or whatever and that an educated consumer is important.”
        • An October 25th Medium article published by the agency sought to educate budtenders and medically endorsed store staff on advising patients around appropriate cannabis products.
  • The board and staff concluded with questions about expansion of the market and future policies, including possible impacts of cannabis federalization, social acceptance around some cannabis consumption, and home growing rights - before acknowledging that Holcomb wouldn’t be the last special guest with insights to share on the anniversary of I-502.
    • Hoffman asked Holcomb to contemplate the future of state cannabis policy, “thinking about expansion of the market, product innovation into the next 10 years; can you share thoughts, ideas, perspectives on what you think about that?” (audio - 5m, WSLCB video, TVW video)
      • Holcomb found that expansion of the cannabis market should mean “an increase of the number of people that are involved in this marketplace, that have an opportunity to be involved in this marketplace.” Though there would be “expansion of the amount of product that is available that we're trying to sell in the marketplace,” she expected that amount would “be driven primarily by demand.” Holcomb thought there were “certainly decisions that we make about how we structure the marketplace” impacting “how much power is given to industry investors who have an interest in enhancing the amount of problematic use. There is…another…rule of thumb from the public health space is that 20% of your users are using 80% of your product, and we want to keep…tabs on that” and look to encourage “reasonable use amounts.”
      • Further licensure should be geared towards “having more owner-operators coming in, having more licenses available that are focused on advantaging small businesses that are establishing trusted relationships with their consumers,” Holcomb suggested. She believed “intoxicating products are different from other products, it matters who's talking to you about the experience that you're having.” With wineries, “you have a much more of a lingering social conversation with someone about it and it's about the social experience, versus swinging by your liquor store to pick up a fifth and go home and drink alone,” said Holcomb. For cannabis, she advised “at every opportunity that we have, to increase the number of experiences that people are having with cannabis that are focused more on pro-social interactions.” The more this could be done, “the more success that we’ll have in creating a new model for introducing an intoxicating substance into a marketplace,” reasoned Holcomb. She hoped there was also a chance to learn from the alcohol industry when it came to “the fact that we've given the industry and its lobbyists too much power over our regulators and that's something I think we're still at a place in the cannabis industry where we can think seriously about that, and map out how it can look differently.”
      • Postman recognized that alcohol interests were “well established” by the time Washington “redid the system for alcohol,” but cannabis was still at “a junction for sure about what that looks like going forward.” He relayed that board members talking to cannabis licensees “hear a lot ‘we want to be treated like any other business’ and…that's hard today only because this is a business the federal government” would rather “close its eyes to and not really give fair treatment to.” Postman further felt “even alcohol is not treated like any other business. It's treated like a business that sells a product that can be harmful.”
    • Postman then mentioned how the board faced “questions about are we picking winners and losers” in the cannabis sector through regulatory actions or policymaking, asking Holcomb, “where would you have us go, and does legalization, particularly with the prospect of national legalization or decriminalization, just make it inevitable that we're going to be talking about bigger businesses, fewer businesses…and that power is going to shift?” (audio - 5m, WSLCB video, TVW video).
      • Firstly, Holcomb insisted, “we should not treat…the cannabis industry, or cannabis, like any other product, or any other business, that would be a failure.” She considered it a fallacy of the drug war, “the notion that all drugs are the same, and treating them all the same, and having the same strategy for dealing with the fact that they're in our society.” Additionally, Holcomb said “one of the things that we need to get used to in this country is talking about intoxicating substances as if they're not all life devastating vices, but they are, each of them, has its own profile…we need to get comfortable at the idea that human beings do engage in activities to alter their mood, to deal with stressors, to increase their social confidence” and other reasons. She also told board members “there are risks that are associated with not having…accurate, adequate information about the choices that you're making when you decide to have a martini, or to smoke a bowl.”
      • Secondly, simply replicating alcohol policies was also problematic for Holcomb, since “we've already said we've failed to kind of create the culture that we would like to see around the use of alcohol.” She preferred to aim for “intoxication…to enhance people's experience of life” and involve “a desire to feel social connection to others when it, in its best sense, when we celebrate the arrival of a child with champagne or a wedding or…an enhancement to social connection, and I think that should be a guiding principle and how we want to develop the cannabis industry.”
      • Holcomb conveyed that this was why she was interested in craft cannabis licensing, as it offered a chance for “more people connecting with each other to talk about the products that are being offered, what they do, what's in them, what the risks are, and what else can I tell you about this to make sure that you and I have a trusted relationship around your experience with this product?” She argued this was a way to achieve “healthy communities rather than be pushing at least some segment of our cannabis using into a place where they start to get in trouble with it.” Holcomb concluded that “we can craft a cannabis industry…that does a better job than either prohibition, or the alcohol model.”
    • Postman’s final question involved social acceptance: “we're not to the point with cannabis and our state where you would see, say an elected official after a hard day say ‘I'm going home and smoking a bowl.’ They could still say, ‘I’m gonna go have a double Bourbon’ and nobody would blink an eye about that.” He anticipated that would change, “but it's also part of the reality that we face” where people “don't like what we're doing, you know, including in our authorizing environment,” and even some legislators that would “undo it if they had the chance” (audio - 4m, WSLCB video, TVW video).
      • Even as the pandemic had “been so horrible for so many families,” Holcomb saw within it an opportunity “to really reflect on how harmful isolation is to humans.” She reminisced about “one of my favorite cannabis experiences” in Spain at a cannabis club (noting “some of you will recall that I am not a practiced cannabis user at all”) “where you could have food, and cannabis, and a glass of wine all in the same location private members only club.” The private nature was a remedy for the “social antipathy towards observed cannabis use,” Holcomb noted, and while “I didn't have very much cannabis or wine frankly,” she enjoyed “the food enormously, and it was exactly what I would love for our relationship with this intoxicant to evolve into.”
      • “I don't want the politician to go home and smoke a bowl by themself in their living room and watch Netflix,” Holcomb said. Instead, “I want them to go and smoke a bowl with their constituents, and hear from them about…what their constituents need, and to be open to that.” For this reason, “I would encourage us to revisit the idea of social clubs…that would allow for us to start developing that responsible, accountable adult-to-adult social experience around cannabis. I think people use less when they're in front of other people. It's really easy to knock yourself out on your sofa, but you don't want to knock yourself out in front of your friends and the public place, even if it is a members only public place.”
    • Vollendroff had wanted to ask about social clubs and was appreciative that Holcomb had touched on the topic. He was also aware that several other legal cannabis states had “provisions for personal use and…growth of individual plants. Do you have any thoughts about that…as we evolve?” (audio - 2m, WSLCB video, TVW video)
      • Holcomb brought up that she was “on record” supporting the move as “we are well past the time where we need to remove the prohibition on personal home grows.” It had been a decade and “adults ought to be able to grow a personal use amount.” She felt that lawmakers and agency leaders could define the specifics, but she was “less concerned about how much you're growing as to how much you're selling.” Holcomb expected that regulators “know how to investigate people for selling cannabis outside of a validly licensed framework and if we're really concerned about there being large illicit market commercial transactions happening we know how to deal with that. So let's stop pretending that we can't have adults grow their own at home.”
    • Postman began to wind down their talk, confident that "change is coming, whether anyone likes it or not.” His hope was that WSLCB could be “really smart about…what we do and how we do it, and, and being inclusive in those conversations.” He noted that subsequent board caucuses would feature stakeholders from other sectors, including public health researchers and the cannabis industry. Postman thanked Holcomb for “your time and thanks for doing this for Washington state…it's really special for us to have you here talking us through what that vision was in your head.” She replied that the experience had been an “honor” for her, and conveyed that board members “took [cannabis policy] to new and wonderful places, and I'm so excited to see where the board takes it in the next ten years” (audio - 3m, WSLCB video, TVW video).
    • Postman concluded the caucus by reminding members that on November 8th they would be hearing public health and prevention perspectives from David Hammond, University of Waterloo School of Public Health Sciences Professor and University Research Chair, along with Julia Dilley, Multnomah County Health Department and the Oregon Department of Human Services Division of Public Health Program Design and Evaluation Services Principal Investigator; also an Affiliate Instructor in Epidemiology at UW (audio - 2m, WSLCB video, TVW video).

Information Set