WA Legislature - Update
(January 15, 2024)

WA Legislature - Update (January 15, 2024) - Takeaways

Companion “high THC” legislation was readied for the Senate, five additional bills were scheduled for committee actions, and two bills were poised for movement on Monday.

Here are some observations of the Washington State Legislature (WA Legislature) for Monday January 15th, the 8th day of the 2024 regular session.

My top 3 takeaways:

  • At the end of the prior week, several additional bills were scheduled for committee actions during the upcoming second week of the 2024 regular session.
    • HB 1341 - "Concerning cannabis license ownership."
      • The House version of the out-of-state ownership bill from 2023 was scheduled for a public hearing on Tuesday January 16th in the WA House RSG. The legislation, which would also suspend inactive producers, received mostly supportive testimony when it was first heard in January 2023, with opposition centered on equity implications from the change.
      • WA House RSG Co-Chair Sharon Wylie told participants at the Washington CannaBusiness Association (WACA) 2023 Symposium that “I'm going to be pushing my bill for out-of-state investors,” indicating she’d seen less pushback on the matter. She claimed the ownership restriction had been intended to “protect the new industry here from big pharma and big tobacco buying up all the licenses and putting all of our own people out of business…that didn't happen, and it hasn't happened in any other state.” For this reason, Wylie planned “to push more with that and do the best I can.”
      • SB 5377, companion legislation in the Senate which had been amended and advanced much farther, remained quarantined in the Washington State Senate Rules Committee (WA Senate RULE) x-file at publication time.
    • HB 2255 - “Concerning inversion and diversion of cannabis.”
    • HB 2320 - “Concerning high THC cannabis products.”
    • HB 2334 - “Transferring certain cannabis licensing activities to the department of agriculture.”
    • SB 5404 - “Increasing cannabis revenue distributions to local governments.”
      • Somewhat unusually, an executive session was scheduled in WA Senate LC on Tuesday January 16th - but no public hearing had been held on the 2023 legislation.  Most likely, this means members intend to refer the bill to a different committee.
      • On Tuesday January 9th, WA House RSG members heard testimony from representatives of local governments who downplayed the importance to elected officials of excise, sales, and use tax revenue from the sale of cannabis in local jurisdictions.
      • During their January 4th meeting, members of the Washington State Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) accepted a final report on “Appropriations and Expenditures of the Dedicated Cannabis Account” which indicated that 239 local governments received 3% of all State excise tax revenue collected from the sale of regulated cannabis products between 2015 and 2023 totaling $102.157M.