WACA - Legislative Preview Conference - 2022 - Keynote
(December 13, 2022) - Summary

WACA - Legislative Preview Conference - Keynote - WSLCB Board Member Jim Vollendroff
[ Event Details ]

WSLCB Board Member Jim Vollendroff spoke candidly about his history, his goals as a cannabis regulator, and his commitment to helping licensees achieve success.

Here are some observations from the Tuesday December 13th Washington CannaBusiness Association (WACA) Legislative Preview Conference.

My top 3 takeaways:

  • WACA Executive Director and Lobbyist Vicki Christophersen introduced Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) Board Member Jim Vollendroff as someone WACA members could collaborate with on their legislative agenda.
    • Noting that Vollendroff—who’d joined the board earlier in the year—had “very quickly reached out to us," Christophersen described his intention to "get to know you all" and "learn about what it means to regulate the cannabis industry.” She felt previous board members had not always “been so friendly to the industry.”
    • “We’re not going to agree on everything, we don’t agree on everything with all of our regulators,” Christophersen said, but a working relationship with the board and “shared understanding” were important. She described Vollendroff’s background as “35 years in the behavioral health field,” including as the “founding director of the Harborview-UW [University of Washington] Medicine Behavioral Health Institute” in 2019. Christophersen felt it was “a good thing to have a behavioral health perspective as we talk about a lot of these difficult issues” such as “intoxicating or impairing products that are available outside of the regulated market and the impact that has on public safety, on youth.”
  • Vollendroff spoke about his family and professional history before appointment to the board, the purpose of the WSLCB, as well as topics like public engagement and thwarting youth access to cannabis.
    • Noting he also taught at the UW School of Social Work, Vollendroff described himself as someone in a "perpetual state of dissatisfaction with the status quo" ready to embrace change and learning. “I am on a steep learning curve” with regards to regulated cannabis, he stated, and looked forward to opportunities for “getting to know you even more.”
    • Vollendroff then shared “a few things about myself outside of my work, so that you get to know a little bit about me.”
      • He came from a large family of nine, with four older sisters and a twin brother and younger brother, and also enjoyed time with his god children.
      • Vollendroff ran marathons and planned to run two in 2023 “to challenge myself physically.” He was also a “master gardener.”
    • Vollendroff thanked Christophersen and WACA Deputy Director Brooke Davies for “connecting with me as well early on and helping me understand not only your legislative priorities…going into the upcoming session, but your past legislative priorities, which were super helpful and interesting.” He echoed Christophersen’s sentiment that there was “common ground…to be had in a lot of situations and I look forward to having you learn more about me, and understanding that, and how I operate.”
    • “I am pretty sure that when word got out that Governor Inslee had appointed somebody with a behavioral health background, and on top of that a person in recovery, that probably some of you stopped in pause. I know I would have,” established Vollendroff. Interviewing for an appointment to the board, he’d been asked about “my position on cannabis legalization and basically ‘are you a prohibitionist, Jim.’ And the answer was ‘no,’ and the response was ‘good, because we're not interested in appointing anybody to the board who comes from that perspective.’” Vollendroff found the governor and board “were really more interested in my academic background…and my ability to work with diverse groups of people.” He acknowledged the help of WSLCB staff and had been “really impressed with the vast majority of the folks that I've worked with at the LCB so far.”
      • Vollendroff had been “on the road to retirement for a variety of reasons” when he’d been appointed to the board to fulfill the remainder of former Board Member Russ Hauge’s term until January 2025. Having “elderly parents,” he wanted to set out on priorities “I hope to achieve in the next couple years” as he did not know “whether I’ll continue.”
    • After a “really great career…that spanned 35-40 years” including work as a “direct clinician of behavioral health services,” a public health official, and university instructor, he felt his most relevant experience came from 16 years in the King County Department of Community and Human Services Behavioral Health and Recovery Division. It was a post where Vollendroff needed to “work with providers that were in a highly regulated environment, much like you guys.” He was also “the primary person working with our lobbyists in King County with the Washington State Legislature.” He also “worked at Providence Saint Peter Hospital down in Olympia; I was their program manager for Behavioral Health Services” before going back to school for a “Masters in Public Administration.” He chose that program as opposed to further clinical training partly since “frankly I was frustrated with working with the government. I was frustrated with the regulators. I was frustrated with the policy.” A career highlight had been when Vollendroff went to work at UW and was asked to help establish a Behavioral Health Institute to “bring the clinicians and researchers and patients together in the same space to accelerate what we know about providing good behavioral health treatment.” He elaborated that “it takes on average seven to ten years…for these clinical practices to actually get into clinical practice in the real world.” 
    • “As a regulating entity, we can't be successful if you guys aren’t successful,” said Vollendroff, “so our role, from my perspective, is to help you be successful and to do things that make your ability to thrive as a business in the state of Washington easier.” However, he believed agency leaders should be “following the science" and was taking the lead on having WSLCB staff evaluate their own programs and policy positions, and “use that research to make better policy decisions.” He wanted to take information gathered by WSLCB and “layer that data with other state agencies [to] really begin to see the implications of policy.” 
    • “I also believe in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and while working at the UW, George Floyd was murdered during that time, and there had never been a conference in the state of Washington around that intersection between behavioral health and racial disparity,” Vollendroff said. He went on to organize the first Race, Equity and Social Justice Conference in 2020, with about “600 people” in attendance, and was proud that the event had continued to convene annually. He helped write a legislative report on behavioral health disparities after seeing racial disparities in behavioral health options while working for King County, having been “reminded all the time that…by and large the vast majority of people who were incarcerated [by the county] were not incarcerated for reasons other than the color of their skin, the community they lived in, the poverty in which they lived.” He added, “I tell you this by way of saying I believe in the work that we're doing around equity and licensing.”
    • A supporter of “community participation in public policy,” Vollendroff hoped to see more engagement both by industry stakeholders as well as other interest groups. He offered a behavioral health slogan that there should be “‘no program about us, without us,’ meaning that people who live with behavioral health need to have a seat at the table and I believe that to be true about this industry as well, and just public policy in general.” He appreciated all public engagement, but “I’m especially interested in youth and young adults, and having youth and young adults participate in public policy, and actively are seeking ways to to make that happen.” Vollendroff urged people to attend and speak at WSLCB Board Meetings, as he said it was a great chance to “directly engage with board members, with the director, and other section leads within the LCB.”
    • Vollendroff had found unanimous support in the cannabis sector for “keeping age restricted products out of the hands of young people,” considering “we know a lot more about brain development then we did 40 years ago when I first got into this field.” He argued scientific evidence showed that “the majority of behavioral health conditions occur, the onset, in adolescence and a lot of that has to do with brain development, and if we can…delay initiation of use until the brain has fully matured we can greatly reducethe chance thatthere's going to be future problematic use.” Vollendroff had so far “been impressed with the work of the industry to help assure that [youth access to cannabis] doesn't happen.” As part of the WSLCB litigation review team, he went over cases where businesses had sold alcohol or cannabis to minors which he viewed as “100% preventable” unless minors used false identification. “That's the one area I would say that I'm pretty black-and-white on in this work, and that is keeping product out of the hands of young people.”
    • Even as a person in recovery, Vollendroff recognized that “the vast majority of people who use cannabis, and alcohol for that matter, do so without negative consequences” and “do not have challenges with substances such as myself.” He pointed out that there were “multiple paths to recovery from addiction,” and he wanted to reduce stigma around them, noting that “people who are in recovery from alcoholism who used cannabis products, whether it's flower, or tinctures, or edibles as part of their recovery” was a valid option. Vollendroff tried to leave use of substances “up to individuals,” and knew some “whose primary drug of choice is cannabis, and they choose abstinence.” He’d kept his status as someone in recovery secret for years, but found it was ultimately “liberating” to be candid about it since “most of us know somebody who has an addiction problem.”
      • He talked about the board being presented with findings that suggested to him “the sky is not falling, the kids aren’t…all using.”
      • Vollendroff wanted to hear how laws and regulations were impacting medical cannabis patients “from folks who are in that situation.”
      • Vollendroff saw a responsibility for the government to “invest…resources into research, and prevention, and treatment,” something he’d discussed with counterparts the previous week at a Cannabis Regulators Association (CANNRA) conference in Tampa, Florida. He’d learned there that Illinois lawmakers designed cannabis revenue distributions that reinvested in disproportionately impacted communities as well as treatment and prevention programs. “I really do support that, I think that it's important that we invest back into the community,” he remarked.
    • Vollendroff summed up his comments by issuing a call for people to meet with him, invite him to later events, or to tour licensed facilities. Additionally, he thought there were “huge opportunities for budtenders to provide good information to consumers, and every question that I've asked of a budtender I've actually been really impressed with their response.” Vollendroff’s ambition was for more budtender training on “literacy programs related to…people who are new consumers.” 
  • Attendees posed questions to Vollendroff around illicit markets, underage use, the behavioral health field’s view of cannabis, educational campaigns, and jurisdictions restricting cannabis businesses.
    • Brandon Park, Hygge Farms Co-Owner, wanted to know what was being done “to stop the illicit market in the state.” He was confident there were “numbers on how many of these retailers are selling to minors…and then we can then go off of that, how many of these minors are then getting it from the street.”
      • Vollendroff called it a “good question” he didn’t have an answer for, although he did want to “enforce more [in] the illicit market.” He theorized if WSLCB Enforcement learned a vapor licensee was selling cannabis products “under the counter” and agency officials “referred that to the local prosecutor, and the local prosecutor said ‘well, it's just cannabis, we're not going to do anything about it.’ That is not an acceptable answer.” He’d spoken with Enforcement and Education staff about what steps they could take to ensure compliance with age restrictions and follow up by local prosecutors. Vollendroff reiterated his call that industry members speak at board meetings, arguing “our board meeting could be more productive if we had more participation and things like that coming up.”
      • Christophersen pointed to the cannabis sector’s high compliance with not selling to youth, but considered WSLCB Enforcement staff to “to spend a lot of time…on the legal industry, on little nitpicky things when we know that there's widely available illicit market products. So, it's something we're going to continue to speak to you all about.” Vollendroff called this a “perfect example of us coming together and working together because I am as invested as you are in that particular issue.”
    • Dan Devlin, Db3 Corporation Co-Founder and former IONIC Brands Interim Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Chief Operating Officer (COO), was curious “what the behavioral health community in this state and nationwide thinks of cannabis.”
      • “It's relatively divided; I will tell you personally that I voted for the passage” of legalization in 2012, Vollendroff indicated, saying he and others in the field believed “first of all alcohol is probably the most abused drug there is and it's legal.” He reasoned that “we make this product over here legal just based on our history, why not this other product?” Vollendroff also believed most in the behavioral health profession could “recognize that the war on drugs was a major failure and that it did disproportionately impact communities of color.” He considered those he associated with in the field to be “actually supportive of the legalization, but they're also concerned about product in the hands of young people.”
    • Mark Olson, Quincey GreenOwner, asked what was the “biggest challenge” Vollendroff thought WSLCB faced, and “what would you focus on to help us be successful?”
      • Various priorities Vollendroff gave were the unregulated market, particularly around delta-8-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-8-THC) products, cannabis banking reforms, and “getting more participation in board meetings.”
      • In order to help cannabis licensees be successful, Vollendroff wanted the agency officials to see that “if you guys are struggling, it's a reflection on us. It's a reflection on the work that we do.” He saw cannabis companies as “very innovative, and so it's hard to always stay on top of that innovation.” Vollendroff offered the example of “high concentration THC products…how do we come together to allow those in the marketplace but keep them out of the hands of young people?” He’d heard that “different states…tax differently based on potency…but I do recognize that we are one of the highest taxed states in the country.”
    • Ezra Eickmeyer, Producers Northwest Principal, talked about his experience as a parent of “three teenage kids, all of whom ignored my advice over the years” and “decided to use weed, all with disastrous consequences. So, I'm living this both as an industry insider and as a parent experiencing the consequences on the other side.” Eickmeyer praised past anti-smoking campaigns in the state and wanted something as effective for youth and cannabis. He asked whether behavioral health stakeholders had “an idea of how much of the money we're generating, as an industry would be needed to have that level of impact on drug experimentation for teenagers in general, not just weed but across the board?”
      • Vollendroff returned first to Devlin’s question about the behavioral health field to note that many prevention advocates were “opposed to legalization and if they had their way we would go back and we wouldn't have legal cannabis. So, there's a difference between treatment people and prevention people.” He nonetheless wanted to see prevention and industry representatives meet and discuss Eickmeyer’s question. Vollendroff said he’d begun to look into “what was promised in [Initiative ]502 in terms of investments, and research, and treatment, and prevention, and where are we at now…I'm starting to look through that data so that we can get to that exact question.” He’d been asking researchers about the most effective campaigns and thought there would be opportunities “for us to do much better in that regard.”
      • Christophersen seconded how “no one wants these products in the hands of kids” and was amenable to meeting with prevention representatives directly because “we believe that we are the best to help make sure that that doesn't happen.” Vollendroff added that he was “committed to being the broker to make that happen,” though there was “hesitancy on the prevention side.” He was a believer in “consumer choice, helping people understand what” products were and “what the concentrations are.”
    • Mark Seegmueller, Mad Mark Cannabis Farms Owner, asked about jurisdictions with moratoriums or bans on cannabis businesses, and whether Vollendroff had seen data which established “any correlation between…prohibitions on the cannabis stores actually being in town” and if “those areas have higher…dealer rates or more youth use in those areas?”
      • Vollendroff replied that it was a “great question” to pose to other WSLCB Enforcement staff at the event, noting it had sparked his own “curiosity if nothing else.”

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