WSLCB - Board Meeting
(August 16, 2023) - Comment on the Public Health Education Liaison Role

With a change in the Public Health Education Liaison position expected at WSLCB before 2024, a member of the public encouraged the board to look at hiring through a “harm reduction” lens.

Here are some observations from the Wednesday August 16th Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) Board Meeting.

My top 3 takeaways:

• Public Health Education Liaison Mary Segawa announced her retirement from WSLCB, and the agency was looking for a new person for the post.
  • The public health education position within a cannabis regulator had been described as a “unique” feature of WSLCB to stakeholders in January 2021. However, in her farewell remarks to the board that September, former liaison Sara Cooley Broschart mentioned that five other states with alcohol regulating agencies had a similar public health position similar to hers.
  • After confirming Segawa’s plans to retire on August 9th, Director of Policy and External Affairs Justin Nordhorn noted she planned to continue until the end of 2023 in order to allow for “crossover” between her and whomever was chosen for the job by agency staff.
    • The liaison position will report directly to Nordhorn.

• Bailey Hirschburg, a member of the Washington chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (WA NORML), called on board members to be involved in picking a successor who could be considered a “chief harm prevention officer” (audio - 2m, Video - TVW).
  • Congratulating Segawa on her retirement, Hirschburg said that although the job “may not be a direct hire of the board, I'd like to encourage board members to be mindful about what they would like…that role to accomplish for the agency.” He indicated that he’d been asking for the creation of a “consumer education group” in WSLCB to draft better “offerings” when it came to WSLCB consumer information, and he remained hopeful “whether that gets going this year, [or] early next year with a new person, that that remains a priority.”
    • In public comments on March 1st and a corresponding email, Hirschburg pointed out the removal of educational materials from the agency website and called for more consumer-focused educational materials, which board members expressed interest in the next week on March 8th.
    • On August 9th, Segawa confirmed in an email to Hirschburg that he would be invited to join a consumer education work group she would be leading with selected public health experts.
  • Hirschburg felt the public health education liaison role for LCB needed less emphasis on “people who don't use products that are regulated by the LCB,” and more harm reduction approaches for those who did. “You need someone at the agency” not only saying “oh, that's not a great idea, legally, or…for health, but also put it into more of a social context,” he argued. Hirschburg urged hiring a liaison “who can not just articulate technically what those issues are, and the problems with them, but also” engage with those who did want to use a regulated substance in a “socialized context.” He felt such a change “would be really valuable.”

• Segawa’s tenure as education liaison coincided with the transformation of cannabis regulation in Washington State through legalization while she remained mostly focused on youth substance prevention approaches and data.
  • Segawa served as Public Health Education Liaison from January 2010 until December 2018 when she was briefly replaced by Scott McCarty, who had worked on youth prevention for the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery (DBHR). However, McCarty didn’t stay in the post for long, and was succeeded by Broschart in May 2019.
    • One of Segawa’s final contributions before retiring from WSLCB in 2018 was the development of a policy analysis framework.
    • According to her LinkedIn profile, following her time at the agency she was self-employed as a “Consultant and Educator - Public Policy and Substance Use Disorder Prevention.” She identified independent projects for this work, including “an analysis of a state's alcohol regulations compared to recommended practices for reducing youth use and adult misuse of alcohol; the development of a toolkit for prevention professionals in four states regarding cannabis legalization and policy development; and a compilation of current cannabis regulations in various states with considerations for policy development.” This included work with the Northwest Prevention Technology Transfer Center (NW PTTC) to facilitate webinars such as “Activating Communities for Change” and “Advocacy Essentials for Prevention Practitioners.”
      • Find out more about NW PTTC, part of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and the PTTC Network Coordinating Office, from a webinar on hemp product risks from August 8th.
  • Segawa returned to the post three years later in May 2022 when Broschart departed and had presented to agency leaders on public health and youth survey data, among other topics:
    • She presented on the 2021 Healthy Youth Survey (HYS) in May 2022, as well as discussing results of the Washington Young Adult Health Survey (WYAHS) with the board alongside University of Washington (UW) Associate Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Jason Kilmer that July.
      • Segawa provided a document outlining her job and responsibilities for incoming Board Member Jim Vollendroff, who had public health experience himself before being appointed.
    • After a presentation on public health data around cannabis by researchers in November 2022, Segawa provided her views on how public health research could help WSLCB efforts around medical cannabis patient needs; advertising; packaging and labeling; and public education.
    • On January 11th, Segawa gave a debrief on attending a Cannabis Regulators Association (CANNRA) conference, focusing on the challenge of cannabis consumer education, regulations in Canada, and concerns in other states when it came to implementing cannabis lounges and social use policies.
    • On April 25th, she talked about medical cannabis opinions in a International Cannabis Policy Study (ICPS) report which surveyed nearly 1,800 respondents from Washington. Nordhorn complimented her for assisting with developing some of the survey questions with ICPS staff.

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