WSLCB - Board Meeting
(December 23, 2020) - In Brief

A pair of rulemaking updates and a citizen request for dedicated cannabis business licensing forms were the last topics heard during the final board meeting of 2020.

• Policy and Rules Coordinator Casey Schaufler provided an update on the agency’s emergency rules banning vitamin E acetate, which were last extended on September 16th. Schaufler said he planned to present the Board with updated emergency rules on January 6th “pursuant to the [Washington] State Board of Health (SBOH) permanent prohibition on the sale of vapor products containing vitamin E acetate.” The only revision would reference the “newly enacted permanent prohibition” (audio - 1m).

• Schaufler announced that Location Compliance Certificate final rules would be presented to board members for adoption on January 6th (audio - <1m).

• Ammon Ford, an attorney with Gleam Law and board member of The Cannabis Alliance, commented on cannabis license applications. Ford said that “the licensing procedures that are currently in use” which took between three and six months to complete were “a great burden on a lot of marijuana licenses.” He wanted the licensing process “to be more efficient for everyone involved” with dedicated forms run through “electronic systems.” Ford found existing processes wasteful and felt WSLCB was still using “stopgap measures that were employed to get a functioning system running early on” (audio - 4m).
  • WSLCB was engaged in a Systems Modernization Project (SMP), last discussed December 9th, which would transition core Licensing and Enforcement functions from a legacy IBM AS/400 minicomputer to an enterprise Salesforce implementation. Considering the agency intended to request additional funding for the long-running information technology project during the 2021-23 biennium, change remained some distance in the future. Learn more from the Washington State Office of the Chief Information Officer (WA OCIO) Project Dashboard.

Information Set