WA House APP - Committee Meeting
(February 25, 2025) - HB 1449 - Public Hearing

Home growing supporters took issue with the cost and need for a traceability requirement amended into the bill which did nothing to lessen opponents’ safety and revenue concerns.

Here are some observations from the Tuesday February 25th Washington State House Appropriations Committee (WA House APP) Committee Meeting.

My top 4 takeaways:

• First, Washington State House Consumer Protection and Business Committee (WA House CPB) Committee Counsel Peter Clodfelter briefed on the revised HB 1449, “Legalizing the home cultivation of cannabis by persons who are 21 years of age and older” (audio - 2m,  video - TVW).
  • WA House CPB heard the legislation on January 28th and recommended passage on February 21st following adoption of three amendments.
    • The only previous home cultivation bill to receive a WA House APP hearing was HB 1614 in 2023. Committee members heard the bill that February, but an executive session was pulled from their schedule and the legislation received no further attention.
  • During the hearing, Clodfelter used the bill report to outline the proposed effects:
    • Legalizes the production and possession of six cannabis plants and the cannabis and cannabis products derived from the plants, by a person age 21 and over, on the premises of the housing unit occupied by the person, subject to requirements.
    • Creates civil infractions related to odor and visibility of the activity and the production and knowing possession of more than six cannabis plants but fewer than 16 cannabis plants, while retaining the class C felony for producing and knowingly possessing 16 or more cannabis plants. 
    • Specifies enforcement provisions and a right to one warning, includes traceability requirements and cannabis waste disposal requirements, requires the posting of information by the Liquor and Cannabis Board and licensed cannabis producers, adds law enforcement training, and modifies real property seizure and forfeiture provisions.
  • Representative Joe Schmick sought clarification on the number of plants allowed per household versus per person (audio - <1m, video - TVW).
    • Clodfelter specified that housing units with more than one adult could cultivate a maximum of 15 plants.
  • Schmick also inquired whether enforcement would be limited to the WSLCB or if local law enforcement could also enforce the provisions of the bill (audio - 1m, video - TVW).
    • Clodfelter responded that local law enforcement would be able to enforce the bill, as “they have enforcement authority on these provisions in the Uniform Control of Substances Act.” He added that the WSLCB retained authority to ensure that commercial cannabis laws were not being violated, “but local police might, in practice, be with some of the enforcement personnel.”

• WA House APP Fiscal Analyst Matt Mazur-Hart's review of the amended fiscal note suggested expected costs for both state and local governments mixed with speculation on revenue impacts due to assumed changes in retail sales (audio - 3m, video - TVW).
  • Mazur-Hart reported that costs in the 2025-2027 fiscal biennium were “estimated at $1.5 million for [WSLCB] and $800,000 for local governments.” Over a four-year period, he relayed that costs were estimated at $3 million for WSLCB and $1 million for local governments.
    • According to Mazur-Hart, the expenses for WSLCB would come from the general fund, with the primary expenditure being staff related costs. The fiscal estimate included 6 and a half full-time equivalents (FTEs) needed to help “folks comply with the traceability requirement.” He stated that the primary cost driver for local governments was one-time training for all city and county officers, in addition to ongoing costs to train all new officers on the history and impact of the war on drugs due to an amendment in WA House CPB from Representative Kristine Reeves.
      • Reeves had raised concerns over how the original draft of the bill would be applied, as she was also sponsoring legislation to change the process for how social equity cannabis licenses would be approved.
  • Mazur-Hart asserted the bill could impact revenue, as he assumed home growing could affect retail sales. He alleged, “on the revenue side, there could be some impact from the bill as well, with folks growing at home that could impact retail sales.” While it was “hard to determine an exact amount, just as a hypothetical estimate, if there was a 2% change in retail sales as a result of the bill that would lead to a roughly $9 million change each year to cannabis revenue,” he told committee members.
    • Mazur-Hart’s estimated revenue impact was speculation that wasn’t part of the fiscal note prepared by agency staff for HB 1449. In 2023, he’d similarly thrown out a “purely illustrative” estimated 0.5% impact, which he’d equated to $5 million per biennium. Lawmakers at the time questioned how that estimate was determined and supporters of that bill challenged the guesswork by Mazur-Hart.
      • A 2020 document with agency fiscal note instructions noted that "If the cost impact is indeterminate, provide some illustrative information or range of scenarios. Agencies must select the single fiscal estimate that reflects the most likely assumptions and scenario. If no one scenario is likely to occur, pick a number that represents the middle of the range...Include an explanation that will help the reader appreciate the factors that make it difficult to develop a reliable estimate."
      • 2023 session instructions for legislative staff regarding fiscal notes had no standards around adding illustrative or hypothetical revenue data that would account for his assumptions, nor why the impact would’ve increased to 2% in 2025 from 0.5% two years earlier.

• Four members of the public offered cautious support for the measure, though some voiced skepticism about the need for commercial traceability oversight of private gardens.
  • John Kingsbury, Cannabis Alliance Patient Committee (audio - 1m, video - TVW, written comments)
    • Kingsbury responded to the hypothetical fiscal revenue loss discussed by Mazur-Hart: “I understand that's illustrative and not based on any data we have, but I think the concern behind it is, is that if people are allowed to grow, a whole bunch of people go out and do that.” However, “growing is hard, and going to the store and buying it is cheap and easy, and we haven't seen that in the 21 other states…that allow home growing,” he said. Kingsbury compared the practice to home brewing, which he argued had been beneficial to the beer industry in Washington.
    • Bringing up the amendment to require home cultivation to follow traceability requirements, Kingsbury said he was “in favor of guardrails, but this amendment will not only add substantial cost, but I also have great concerns about whether it's even technically possible to implement it at this time.”
      • The revised fiscal note prepared by WSLCB did not estimate a cost impact for traceability, though it did acknowledge that officials were in the early stages of replacing the Cannabis Central Reporting System (CCRS). Additionally, it relayed a staff interpretation that individual participation in any home grow tracking would be “subject to a fee the LCB may impose to recoup costs.”
    • Despite his reservations, Kingsbury was “asking [the committee] to move this bill forward.”
  • Mike Asai, Black Excellence in Cannabis (BEC) Vice President (audio - 1m, video - TVW)
    • Asai remarked that “this legislation is crucial” and aligned Washington State laws with home cultivation practices common in other states. “We must stop viewing cannabis through the outdated lens of [a] so-called gateway drug. This is simply not true. Cannabis is a plant, and responsible adults should have the right to cultivate it at home.”
    • Asai regarded HB 1449 as protecting “longtime homeowners from unnecessary prosecution, but also safeguard[ing] new homeowners, many of whom come from communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the cannabis prohibition.” He didn’t want to see vulnerable communities where individuals were allowed “to be criminalized again for choosing to grow a plant.”
    • “We respectfully urge this committee to pass House Bill 1449, out of committee and move Washington State forward in the fight for cannabis justice and equity,” concluded Asai.
  • Caitlein Ryan, Cannabis Alliance Executive Director (audio - 1m, video - TVW)
    • Sharing her support of the bill, Ryan qualified that she was opposed to the traceability aspect, arguing “none of these states have implemented a traceability system” as a requirement for cultivation for personal use. She encouraged lawmakers to look at data from Colorado to see if there had been problems with the state’s home growing policy. Moreover, Ryan noted that medical cannabis patients were already allowed to grow a limited number of plants without traceability mandates. “And people who purchase from stores are allowed to gift cannabis to one another, also, without requiring traceability,” she stated.
    • Ryan argued that the purpose of HB 1449 should be to allow “responsible adults the freedom to cultivate cannabis for personal use with clearly defined and reasonable limits. We urge you to remove this amendment yet move this bill forward.”
  • Joshua Sheets, Homegrown Marijnuana author (audio - 1m,  video - TVW)
    • Sheets echoed other supporters that the legislation was better without the traceability requirements. He said that concerns about plants growing to large sizes could be “easily amendable as well, with the square foot inside or a square foot outside” stipulated in the law. Sheets viewed the measure as being about "freedom of the plant, and freedom for the people in Washington state to be able to garden without serious interruption, and to be able to commune with the plant and have a healing, therapeutic, personal experience with their garden.” He summed up that home cultivation policies were “what we were missing in our system…As far as cannabis is concerned, it's important for our place as pioneers in the state of Washington.”

• Opposition to home growing came from representatives of substance prevention, policing, and city government organizations, and painted a dire picture of how the expanded requirements in the bill were still insufficient in resolving their public safety and youth exposure concerns.
  • Derrick Nunnally, Association of Washington Cities (AWC) Lobbyist (audio - 1m, video - TVW)
    • Nunnally stated that city officials were concerned local law enforcement agencies would be tasked to carry out insufficiently specified requirements on visibility and odor of gardens. He further believed an “officer investigating those things would have very little discretion under the way the bill is currently written before using a person's single allotted warning,” rather than issuing the specified civil infraction.
      • Under existing law, law enforcement has no discretion to avoid arresting adults growing six or fewer cannabis, although patients have limited arrest protection.
  • James McMahan, Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) Policy Director (audio - 1m, video - TVW)
    • McMahan said WASPC members “were not the biggest fans of I-502,” the initiative legalizing cannabis in 2012, and they believed the operative wording in that measure had been the need for a “tightly regulated commercial system.” Pointing to “burglaries and robberies” against licensed cannabis businesses, he commented that, “last week, we saw a car driven…through the front door of two of our recreational shops within hours of each other. We simply do not want this violence and crime to follow people home.”
      • McMahan didn’t clarify that only one of the two stores hit by the vehicle was actually robbed. A security door at the first shop prevented suspects from accessing the building after the collision.
      • At time of publication, Washington State was already one of the top jurisdictions for burglaries, according to data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). While the breakdown of property types stolen from 2015 to 2024 didn’t specify plants or gardening materials, ‘consumable goods’ accounted for less than 1% of all stolen items.
  • Megan Moore, Washington State Public Health Association (WPHA) Executive Director (audio - 1m, video - TVW)
    • Moore claimed that “if grown outdoors, in our lush Eastern Washington climate, one plant could become the size of a car and yield between 10 to 14 pounds of cannabis.” With multi-adult households allowed up to 15 plants, she expected the bill “may contribute to lowering the cost of cannabis and retail stores, especially if product floods the market.” Moore highlighted that this scenario might “negatively impact the dedicated cannabis account by [an] estimated $9 million which makes up a significant portion of the state's budget.”
      • While there is discrepancy in what is considered an average plant yield for cannabis grown outside, most experts report between a half pound and a pound.
    • Moore further argued there would be “potential black market impacts of home cultivation.” She called attention to larger, criminally-connected grows being shut down in Colorado in 2019, as well as enforcement against unlicensed commercial activity “happening in New York as they work to stand up their newly recreational market, and the state can simply not afford these impacts.”
  • Scott Waller, Washington Association on Substance Misuse and Violence Prevention (WASAVP) Board Member (audio - 1m, video - TVW)
    • Waller regarded HB 1449 as “a right for people to ignore laws passed by cities and counties that enacted cannabis moratoria.” He anticipated the bill would lead to “substantial” loss in cannabis sales and revenue as people grew their own, costing “as much as $9 million a year.”
      • Both Moore and Waller recited the estimated $9M revenue impact figure shared publicly for the first time during Mazur-Hart’s briefing, yet both appeared to be reading from scripted remarks, calling into question how they obtained foreknowledge of that information.
    • Waller also expected “fire and explosion potential from butane and other flammable compounds used to convert plant cannabis into concentrates, a process likely to be used by home growers.” His reasoning was that before cannabis concentrates were commercially available, “there were many butane fires and explosions in Washington.”
      • Washington law prohibits use of explosive gases for cannabis extraction except with a processor license. Although this hadn’t deterred criminal elements, nothing in HB 1449 would make the practice more permissible.
    • Waller’s main objection was that the bill could weaken “the state's historical commitment to protect youth from cannabis promotion by allowing cannabis grows in dwellings next door to and across from schools, parks and playgrounds.”
      • Washington law limits cannabis business operations near schools and parks, however the statute hadn’t been applied to residential cannabis use and authorized cultivation by patients on private property adjacent to those premises.
      • With restrictions on odor and visibility from public areas and no advertising involved in personal gardens, it's unclear if home grows could promote cannabis to anyone.
  • At publication time, HB 1449 had not been scheduled for an executive session before the fiscal committee cutoff on Friday February 28th.