WA Legislature - Update
(May 8, 2023)

WA Legislature - Update (May 8, 2023) - Takeaways

The Governor has called for a special session of the Washington State Legislature, and Cannabis Observer will be there to increase transparency and accountability with your support.

Here are some observations of the Washington State Legislature (WA Legislature) for Monday May 8th, eight days until the start of the first 2023 Special Session.

My top 3 takeaways:

  • On Tuesday May 2nd, Governor Jay Inslee announced a proclamation convening a 30-day special session of the Washington State Legislature on Tuesday May 16th to complete a “Blake fix” before July 1st.
    • On Monday May 1st during a media availability following a set of bill actions, Inslee indicated, “Obviously we need to pass the new drug law. I will be announcing a special session tomorrow presumably on a particular date” (audio - 2m, video).
    • On Tuesday May 2nd, the Washington State Office of the Governor (WA Governor) issued a press release announcing the special session. Inslee was quoted as saying, “Cities and counties are eager to see a statewide policy that balances accountability and treatment, and I believe we can produce a bipartisan bill that does just that. Details are still being negotiated, but caucus leaders share the desire to pass a bill. I believe that starting the clock on May 16 will put us on a path to getting the job done this month.”
    • Following the press release, several legislative leaders issued statements.
      • Senate Republican Leader John Braun protested, “The governor had indicated he would not call a special session until legislative leaders reached an agreement that is worth bringing in front of each chamber. To be clear, we’re not to that point yet, although there have been productive bipartisan discussions over the past week. In that sense his announcement today was unexpected.”
      • House Republican Leader Drew Stokesbary, elected to the role after J.T. Wilcox stepped down at the conclusion of the regular session, indicated his caucus remained “committed to passing statewide legislation that provides opportunities for those who are willing to undergo treatment and accountability for those who aren't. However, we will not support a bill that falls short of either of these goals and simultaneously prevents local governments from enacting their own solutions.”
    • On Thursday May 4th during an unrelated bill signing, Inslee took the opportunity to thank Representative Roger Goodman “for the work he's doing attempting to obtain a Blake Bill shortly for us. So legislators are working hard on this and I hope we get this done” (audio - 2m, video).
    • Later in the afternoon on May 4th, proclamation 23-02 was published by the WA Governor which formalized the announcement and provided the following language describing the scope and intent of the special session:
      • WHEREAS, work remains to be done with respect to approving a “Blake fix” before July 1, 2023, to ensure that knowing and unlawful drug possession is not decriminalized, establish a pretrial diversion program, and provide additional treatment facilities and services for people with substance use disorders; and
      • WHEREAS, if lawmakers fail to approve a statewide “Blake fix” before July 1, 2023, local jurisdictions may fill the void by passing their own drug possession regulations, resulting in an unwieldy patchwork of drug possession regulations that will vary from one local jurisdiction to the next; and
      • WHEREAS, funding for diversion and treatment is attached to the “Blake fix” bill, and failure to timely pass the bill will reduce the much needed financial support to establish and enhance these programs.
      • NOW, THEREFORE, I, Jay Inslee, Governor of the state of Washington, by virtue of the authority vested in me by Article II, Section 12 (Amendment 68) and Article III, Section 7 of the Washington State Constitution, do hereby convene the Washington State Legislature in Special Session in the Capitol at Olympia on Tuesday, May 16, 2023, at 10:00 a.m. for the purpose of enacting legislation as described above.
    • A considerable amount has been written around the provenance of and expectations about the session, but perhaps the most insightful article was published on Friday May 5th by Ashley Nerbovig for The Stranger titled, “Progressive Democrats Want to Compromise on a New Drug Law.”
  • Cannabis Observer intends to cover the special session and here’s why.
    • The mission of Cannabis Observer is to help “dismantle the prohibition of cannabis by creating outstanding information about cannabis policymaking in Washington state for stakeholders, the public, and policymakers themselves.” The possession of cannabis was—and in too many places remains—the primary means by which the so-called war on drugs was instrumentalized against the American people, disproportionately against Black, indigenous, and other persons of color, impacting communities across multiple generations. While we did not follow SB 5536 during the regular session to focus our limited resources on 37 cannabis-related bills, we’re committed to contributing our skills to increase transparency and accountability during this unique moment for drug policy in Washington state.
    • What is being characterized uncritically as a “Blake fix” includes a judgment by Washington State elected officials about the efficacy and humaneness of a criminal justice approach to the proliferation of substance use disorders in the age of Fentanyl.
      • Crucially, legislators will decide whether to increase the criminal penalty associated with the expiring law on knowing possession of controlled substances from a misdemeanor to a gross misdemeanor, which would institute downstream consequences for those convicted beyond an increased prison sentence by extending probationary periods, impacting access to housing, and reinforcing other barriers created by criminal justice system involvement. Some have characterized this potential increase in criminalization, if it were approved by the Legislature and Governor, as “rebooting” the war on drugs.
    • Also at issue is the suggestion to create a new crime of public consumption of controlled substances as a different means of ushering individuals into the criminal justice system and out of public view.
      • The cannabis community in Washington state has grown accustomed to the continued stigmatization that accompanies the legal requirement that consumption of cannabis be conducted privately in one’s home (unless the landlord prohibits the act, one lives in federally subsidized housing, or is houseless). Licensed cannabis producers must invest in tall, conspicuous fencing to prevent their communities from having to visually countenance the slightly less forbidden plant - though NIMBYs routinely complain about smells as a proxy for prohibitionist leanings. Medical patients aren’t allowed to grow their own cannabis in public view - and legislators seem unable to believe adults can more generally be trusted to grow cannabis responsibly at home.
      • Meanwhile, other states not only allow home grown cannabis but permit public and social consumption of cannabis in ways that communities have found acceptable - and even preferable to the public safety and health hazards that accompany tobacco, vapor product, and alcohol consumption.
      • So any new laws being contemplated at the state or local level to vilify public consumption of controlled substances very well may create new impediments to the long-term effort to destigmatize cannabis and other propagandized medicinal plants.
  • The importance of the special session for the future of drug policy in Washington state can’t be overstated, but we hadn’t planned to cover it and it’s outside our area of expertise; we see that as an opportunity and here’s how you can help.
    • Cannabis Observer has thus far been an experiment financed by myself and by the community that has formed around our work. We have made that work, at a financial loss and with spiritual costs for my family, for more than five years. If you have not thought to ask how we sustain this work and learned that it is up to you, I encourage you to help us carry on now. To all of our sponsors and donors who have voluntarily contributed funds and support to enable us to do this work, you have my eternal gratitude - and read on to learn what we intend to harvest.
    • I have undertaken this work to build on my career supporting activists, advocates, and changemakers. From my work organizing the information technology infrastructure team at Occupy Austin to nearly a decade of support for federal, state, and grassroots advocates at Consumer Reports - I’ve focused on helping others make change.
    • In the process, I learned that there were limits to my understanding of what to build because I had never really advocated for something myself, for something which I fundamentally believed in. When I moved my family to Washington state in 2017, I recognized that the on-going push for cannabis legalization and destigmatization, expediting the ignominious ending of the failed war on people who use particular drugs, was a movement that my heart could get behind - and a winning one at that. I set out to dive deeply into that policymaking effort to see how much one person could influence outcomes in a positive and creative manner - and hopefully learn along the way what individuals everywhere needed to undertake change in their communities on issues of importance to them.
    • In the cannabis policy space, we have proven that a singular effort to observe and propagate quality information about the policymaking process can shift the power dynamic in more equitable directions.
      • We have shown that tremendous resources are expended simply trying to stay contemporary with what is happening - and those resources are expended by every organization and by individuals trying to influence policymaking outcomes. Supporting a trustworthy entity to undertake that work and freely provide the information for all parties lifts the burden of keeping up, and enables more resources to be devoted to pursuing the actual change citizens would like to see.
      • We have shown that the existing means for public engagement enshrined in the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA) and the Public Records Act (PRA) are underutilized and powerful mechanisms for influencing change if used rigorously and consistently. We can’t take credit for the regulatory innovation we’ve helped promote at the WSLCB, but the act of our promotion has complemented the efforts of public servants to provide more means for gathering input from citizens earlier in the process of rulemaking. And we have barely glimpsed the surface of the submerged mountain of public information created by every government agency which is usually accessible simply for the asking. Much work remains to be done to better organize and coordinate efforts to make public information actually publicly accessible.
      • We have demonstrated how the respectful observation of the public activity of governing bodies—and importantly the recognition of the shared humanity of the individual people who compose those bodies—has a salutary overall effect on policy ecosystems. Elected officials and government staff pay closer attention to the legal requirements of their profession when it’s apparent they are being watched and will be held accountable. It’s worth mentioning that my compassion for other people is grounded in the enlightening and clarifying qualities of the medicinal plants for which I have devoted the last five years of my life to fight on behalf of.
    • We have gone deep enough to observe these important truths about human systems of governance and to build tools to help augment the capabilities of individuals to meaningfully participate in those systems. It is time to share those tools in other policy verticals and with other observers keen on doing what we can to more quickly change our systems for the better. It is with that intention that we not only set out to observe the special session in the adjacent policy verticals of criminal justice and behavioral health, but more widely share what we have learned in the process.
      • If you believe in the work we are doing at Cannabis Observer and the individuals doing it, help us continue that work. We have a modest goal of $7500/month of recurring funding to simply pay Bailey and I for the work we do - and we’d like to count you as a sponsor.
      • If you know individuals who work at journalism outlets which intend to cover the special session, please introduce us! No one planned for nor set aside funding to cover a special session. Our fundamental work can supercharge the efforts of reporters to more meaningfully and accurately create better media describing what is happening.
      • If you really believe in the value of bringing the Cannabis Observer approach to the special session, we can fundraise to hire a dedicated, limited duration observer to focus on this event. There’s uncertainty because the session could be done in a day if the Democrats abandon bipartisanship - or it could take longer, up to 30 days. If you are in a position to help fund that effort or connect us to potential funders, we would welcome introductions. We estimate needing $5K to on-board a limited duration observer and would create valuable operating procedures in addition to generating more rigorous and better informed observations by a policy-specific journalist.
    • Meanwhile, our strategic work to prepare for what’s next could be delayed - but with your help we can make progress on that pre-planned work, too.
      • My background is computer science, and we have begun experimenting with machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to complement the work we do. I can say I’ve never seen anything like the promise and peril these technologies portend, and I’m committed to finding ways to creatively use them to constructively further the work of the Cannabis Observer - and all other observer-inspired efforts we can spark. In particular, we’re looking at the possibility of applying large language models (LLMs) to the tasks of summarization and question answering.
        • We expect there is value in automated summarization of transcripts of public meetings, at the top level as well as individual segments/chapters. To a limited extent, that’s what our human written observations aim to do - but we add deeper context from our own experience and knowledge. We’re very curious to explore how to enable these technologies to complement and leverage our expertise - while also potentially rapidly expanding the breadth and depth of coverage we can provide not only in Washington state, but all jurisdictions.
        • We also see value in fine tuning foundation models on the copious amounts of information we have been rigorously gathering, tagging, and archiving for the past five years: nearly three terabytes of data from more than 1750 events including over 20K explicitly marked documents. We wonder how useful it might be to have a chatbot that is continually updated with the latest information we gather which you can ask any question of and expect a reasonable response - although in our experience thus far those responses require fact checking by human subject matter experts.
      • I feel fairly isolated in undertaking this work in Olympia, so if you have connections to experts, potential funders, or sympathetic souls - we’d appreciate the suggested serendipity of introductions. We feel the pressure and the promise of this path, and are eager to help position these technologies appropriately to augment rather than automate the very human work of policymaking and civic engagement.
    • We have a lot we want to do, and we need help getting there. After reading this, I hope you have a better understanding of who we are and what we’re trying to accomplish - and that we have motivated you to want to contribute to and leverage our work in new ways. The special session will be interesting no matter what, but it’s already been the catalyst for important changes at Cannabis Observer - and we look forward to sharing more from our journey which in many ways is just getting started.