Category: Marijuana legalization

Why Postprohibition?

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by Dominic Corva, Executive Director

I’m deeply unsatisfied with the ways we talk about cannabis legalization right now. Policymakers talk about it as a technical problem, opponents talk about it as a social threat, proponents talk about it as an end goal in itself, businesspeople talk about it as a financial gold rush, progressives talk about it as a social justice fix, and public health officials talk about it as a health risk, to name a few ways of talking about it that strike me as serving particular agendas that are different from mine.

I want to talk about legalization as a social problem.  Not because legalization as a general idea is a social problem, but because the way we are doing legalization isn’t making a clean break from prohibition. And prohibition has always been a really big social problem. This is why I want to talk about postprohibition: legalization with, not after, prohibition.

This makes things difficult, because I don’t think we really understand prohibition very well. This applies across the spectrum, including people who fight against prohibition as well as neo-Prohibitionists.

I think we understand prohibition as a legal problem pretty well, but not as a cultural problem. Laws reflect and institutionalize cultural values about what, and who, must be controlled by the State’s monopoly on violence in society.

The authority of the State to use that monopoly against people who use the wrong drugs the wrong way, in a liberal democracy, requires a fairly liberal tolerance of authoritarian attitudes throughout the population: a willingness to conduct war without end.

So to me, prohibition is one expression of authoritarian culture in a “free” society. It’s politics as the extension of war by other means. I’m not big on war, and I certainly object to the open-ended militarization of society against elements of its own population that aren’t hurting anyone else because they grow, distribute, or consume a plant.

I like plants. I think they teach us a lot about being a part of a living ecosystem, especially if we co-exist with them in ways that are more than commodified.

So if our current round of “experiments in democracy” that we call legalization are hamstrung by cultural attitudes about how dangerous a plant is; and how deferential we need to be towards still-actually-existing Federal Prohibition laws despite their really obviously political, rather than scientific, origins; then I have a problem with what legalization means and therefore how we talk about it.

There are many many ways to disagree with me about my problems with legalization that are really problems with democratic authoritarianism. But the demonstrably correct observation that new State and local legal frameworks exist alongside and in tension with National, Global, State, and Local cannabis prohibitions isn’t one of them.

So let’s start there, with the empirical fact that we are dealing with a complex legal landscape with conflicting and/or badly aligned elements. This observation does not lead necessarily to agreeing with my cultural analysis of postprohibition, but it does establish a common sense ground for talking about cannabis legalization beyond whether it’s good or evil.


Popular Anxieties

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Popular Anxieties: Controlling Cannabis and Other Markets at the End of the World

by Dominic Corva, Political Geographer

This post is a preview of the talk I will give in Portland on September 27, 2018, hosted by the Commune PDX and the Initiative. The one hour lecture will include time for gathering before and after, between 6:30 and 9. Suggested donation at the door is $10, though anyone for whom this amount is a hardship is welcome regardless. Conversely, since the lecture serves as a fundraiser for The Center for the Study of Cannabis and Social Policy, we are grateful for folks who can give more. The paragraph in bold serves both as a general abstract and introductory paragraph for an extended preview of the talk.

It is more important than ever to differentiate populist anxieties from ones grounded in real social problems for which we have plenty of evidence but weak individual and institutional capacity with which to deal. The liberation of a plant and its people from prohibition law and policy must contend not only with the persistence of prohibition culture, but broader anxieties about the way things are now, at large, for which legal cannabis markets may seem like adding fuel to the fire. This talk identifies the landscape of post-prohibition as embedded in wider anxieties about the world in which we live and what to do about it, as a political and economic history of the present.

The liberalization of cannabis control has arrived rather late to conditions of modernity that have been broadly characterized in the social sciences as “neoliberalism” for the last several decades. The second stage of cannabis prohibition, dating from 1971, emerged as a reaction against the people associated with the New Left of the 1960s, rather than scientific evidence that the plant itself posed a substantive public health threat to the population. The political and economic conditions that gave cannabis prohibition new life were part of the “culture wars” of the New Right — the generalization of anxieties about security in society at large.

That reaction was materialized as an extension of the welfare-warfare state, a massive expansion of the prison-industrial complex that fit uneasily alongside neoliberal tendencies to marketize public policy, deregulate financial markets, and, from the center-left, otherwise expand cultural freedoms. It was a security exception to the politics and economics of freedom, consolidated as a bipartisan consensus during the Clinton administration. Anxieties about public health are the cultural building blocks of prohibition culture, never mind the total absence of scientific evidence that formed them.

Anxieties about cannabis as a threat to public health and social order now form the institutional barriers to liberating, rather than liberalizing, cannabis from deeply institutionalized  politics and policies of control. Alongside these hoary obstacles to sensible public policy, though, the general political and economic winds that shape public policy at large have shifted against the direction of progressive change. Generalized economic, political and ecological crises — the “end of the world,” so to speak — inform popular anxieties about political and economic change that are quite different from the crises that gave rise to neoliberal consensus.

As a result, the liberation of cannabis from the politics of control must contend not only with the “dead” labor of deceit and ignorance at the root of prohibition culture, but with entirely reasonable contemporary anxieties about what 40 years of neoliberal governance has wrought: industrial-pesticidal agriculture; hydrocarbon-fueled ecological crisis; corporate, pay-to-play democracy; the pharmaceutical marketing of better living through chemistry fueling opioid dependence and generalized mental health crises; the triumph of the military-industrial complex through permanent warfare; and so forth.

We are clearly not making much progress towards evidence-based public policy, in general — otherwise it wouldn’t seem so much like the end of the world.  Why would we expect post-prohibition cannabis policy to work any better than public policy tendencies, at large? If another world is possible, the struggle for sensible cannabis policy must be linked with the struggle for political and economic conditions that make space for social peace and resilience rather than economic and political warfare.

Cannabis and Cultural Economy

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by Dominic Corva, Executive Director

Simple concepts are pretty good for marketing, branding, and advertising, but they aren’t much help for engaging with complex problems. In today’s post, I want to explain the concept of “cultural economy” so we can engage with the possibility that cannabis markets and policy might be shaped towards social peace, not just selling products.

If your central concern is how to maximize revenue, then this post might not be very useful for you. The audience to whom I write desires a more peaceful world and is willing to give up a little bit of short-term material gain to make that possible.

Markets and Society

What do we mean when we say that we live in a capitalist society? It depends on who is answering, but perhaps an uncontroversial starting point might be that a capitalist society creates and allocates social opportunities predominantly through the movement of money value. Money capital, or exchange value as political economists might say, provides a universal means for particular individual or social ends to be realized. No home? If you have money, no problem.

Of course, if you have a healthy social ecology, you may not need money to at least be housed. You might be able to rely on a family member or friend to sleep out of the elements. The people who can house you in such circumstances aren’t rewarded by money, but perhaps by love or compassion. Love and compassion are cultural values — they mean something different in different places, but nonetheless are important strands in the webs of meaning that hold societies together.

This example helps us understand that we don’t live in a society that is exclusively shaped by capitalism, even if capitalism is the primary means through which housing happens.

In fact, social relations are determined by many, many other values besides money. Friendships, for example, aren’t (hopefully) relationships that one buys and sells. Certainly, it is much more rare to purchase one’s parents, children, lovers, and communities, than not.

Thus we can understand that living in a capitalist society does not mean our society exclusively depends on the movement of capital. Many entrepreneurs in society, in fact, get off the ground and even thrive by incorporating “more-than-capitalist” values into their business plans.

This is most obvious with businesses that cater to “ethical consumers”: people who pay more for products that are associated with fairness and sustainability. “Fair trade,” “non-GMO,” and “organic” products line the shelves of our grocery stores, and of course corporations like Patagonia and Whole Foods exist on the range of more-than-capitalist business plans.

Where does the legal cannabis industry fit, is the question at hand. Are there “more than capitalist” values that cannabis entrepreneurs desire to accompany the flow of capital?

Cannabis Cultural Economy

In the U.S., cannabis culture comes from the 1960s, associated with two very particular forms of social movement: counterculture and the antiwar left.

Counterculture was not necessarily a “left” meaning system, although the overlap was pretty strong and certainly well-advertised. The hippie phenomenon was fairly libertarian and rejected centralized solutions to social problems. It had a well-developed critique of the State as a culturally conservative institution, aimed at preserving cultural values that made a lot less sense in the context of the “square” industrial capitalist economy. Rejecting social norms didn’t lead to a different set of central values: it opened up space for individual freedoms that ranged the gamut from free love to the pursuit of self-interest untethered from social obligation.

The antiwar left wasn’t monolithic either. It may be a reach to even attach the “left” to “antiwar” because plenty of cultural conservatives weren’t too keen on the draft nor the Vietnam war. It’s even an open question whether it was the hippies or the soldiers that really brought cannabis consumption into Western culture, given the extent to which Vietnam soldiers and vets adopted cannabis use as way to cope with existing in the middle of a war that didn’t make sense as well as the trauma of living through it and coming home — yes, often with suitcases of hash and opium for entrepreneurial reasons. The hills of Southern Humboldt were full of veterans that found they couldn’t manage their PTSD by re-entering normal society, as well as veterans of student organizing and Haight-Ashbury that sought to go “back to the land” and live a sort of pre-industrial existence in communes and on cheap land available after the postwar timer economy went bust.

The existence of a cultural market for cannabis led, eventually, to the commercialization of that market when the U.S. government got the Mexican government to use Paraquat to eradicate the fields supplying urban veterans of the counterculture and foreign wars. Suddenly, California’s sinsemilla growers found that they had a cash crop in their food gardens, and the wholesale price per pound in the late 1970s shot up to about $11,000/pound adjusted to 2011 prices, the last time I made that calculation for a journal article.

That’s when the modern cannabis cultural economy was mixed, when producing cannabis for profit slid in — fairly easily — with the rural spaces inhabited by the remnants of the counterculture that were already hybridizing with rural values and people. Rural libertarianism and countercultural values teamed up to object to the Federal government as an invading force, helicopters and all.

This was an alliance that protected cannabis production and consumption for everyone, not just hippies, vets, and people that rejected the characterization of cannabis as a threat to society. In particular, it protected and nurtured commercial values as important to the central value of the cannabis cultural economy: overgrowing the government.

Cannabis, Values, Capitalism

And it won, sort of. The wave of legislation behind the creation of regulated cannabis markets has certainly crippled the prospects of total cannabis prohibition around the world. But we are facing a split that was really there all along, between the value of those for whom cannabis markets are an end to themselves; and the value of cannabis markets as a means for creating a more just and peaceful world. These values are not inherently left nor right.

Libertarian entrepreneurialism has a problem with over-regulation that constructs new barriers between the cannabis haves and have-nots, for different reasons than the progressive peaceniks. Similarly, corporate cannabis interests support artificial, non-market-derived barriers to protect their returns on investment, while progressive liberals support regulations to protect consumers and non-cannabis culture stakeholders whose support was necessary to accomplish legalization-with-prohibition.

This is the great difference dividing the cannabis cultural economy today. In one direction, “normalized” cannabis markets that pursue profit and tax revenues for their own sake. And in the other, “normalized” cannabis markets for erasing stigma and including communities affected by the drug war in the imagined peace dividend.

The realist in me says that regulated cannabis markets are likely to be dominated by the former value, exchange value, rather than other values like compassion and restorative justice. But the mission of CASP is to make space for more-than-capitalist values to live on and perhaps thrive, through compassionate industry practices, post-prohibition policy education, and socially oriented academic research agendas. There may be no end to this struggle, but it’s worth struggling for in the interest of social peace. The cultural economy of cannabis is evolving, and we are too.

 

 

5 years post legalization: Over-Regulation Threatens the Viability of Small Cannabis Farmers.

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by Crystal Oliver, President, Co-Founder, Washington’s Finest Cannabis; Executive Board Member, Cannabis Farmers Council; Executive Assistant, Washington State Affiliate for NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws)

[reprinted with permission from the author, from November 5, 2017 — DC]

Five years ago when my husband and I attended the New Approach Washington Initiative 502 election night celebration we had no idea that we would be spending the next few years engaging with so many different regulatory agencies, we were still undecided about whether or not we would enter the market.

I remember the hearing the WSLCB held in Spokane, there were several hundred in attendance. My husband, Kevin Oliver‘s testimony recommended the board adopt regulations that allowed small businesses to thrive and also encouraged the board to allow those with past drug convictions an opportunity to participate in the newly legal market.

When the WSLCB released their first set of draft regulations I pored over the hundreds of pages. The board had indeed put together regulations that included provisions to protect small business including caps on the number of retail stores and farms a person could own as well as caps on the size of individual and state canopy. We ran some projections and decided that we were in a position to start our business and take our advocacy to the next level. We were confident that we could support implementation and demonstrate that legalization was preferable to prohibition.

Just two months after our initial screening interview with the WSLCB, after we had submitted hundreds of pages of documents including our banking records & fingerprints (which we had taken at the public safety building by an active law enforcement officer). Our local county commissioners adopted an emergency zoning ordinance that rendered 97% of our parcel unusable for growing or processing marijuana. This would be our first introduction to the world of land use policy and the Washington State Rule Making process.

We were eventually successful in organizing and mobilizing the local would-be legal marijuana farmers to oppose the ordinance and a new less restrictive ordinance was adopted and we along with our fellow farmers were able to move forward.

Next came a proposal from the Washington Association of Building Officials (WABO) to modify the state building code to add Marijuana growing and processing to the list of “moderate factory industrial uses” which would have triggered F1 building code requirements for all structures where cannabis was grown. Fire flow requirements alone would have devastated rural cannabis farmers throughout the state. Again, we organized and mobilized the farmers and saw the proposed rule modified and marijuana growing was stricken from the rule proposal. I would later serve on the Cannabis TAG for the SBCC as they clarified and modified the fire code for marijuana extraction.

Meanwhile, the WSLCB continued to adopt emergency rule after emergency rule. There were months where multiple rule changes were adopted impacting our businesses processes, too many to list here. A couple over-reaching proposals that come to mind were the WSLCB proposed rule to add destruction of inventory as a mandatory penalty for farmers violating minor regulations and the proposed requirement of commercial grade fencing. In both these instances we had to organize and mobilize and push back and we won.

There have also been battles with the legislature including preventing cannabis farmers from taking agricultural tax exemptions, allowing out of state financing and increasing our license fees which the farmers have lost.

Recently the WSLCB awarded the traceability contract to Franwell, aka METRC, an RFID company, and we mobilized farmers to oppose the requirement of these expensive, single use hard plastic tags for tracking or security. The WSLCB agreed that the vendor could not require this and then METRC pulled out of the contract.

Now our farm is facing increased fees from the county and the local clean air agency. The Clean Air Agency hearing is actually the day after the 5 year anniversary of when legal pot went into effect in Washington.

It’s too bad the farmers can’t celebrate; instead they’re fighting government overreach. It’s no wonder there is so much income inequality in the US when various government agencies are always trying to take a piece of the revenue from small business owners while offering tax breaks and other incentives to large businesses.

I am proud of the work that we’ve done as a group but I fear for the future viability of small, family run cannabis farms in this state. Over-regulation and over-taxation is strangling them.

Former Deputy Director of WSLCB : Home Grow is a Small Step

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https://www.tvw.org/watch/?clientID=9375922947&eventID=2017101007&autoStartStream=true

by Dominic Corva, Executive Director

Yesterday, the WSLCB invited public comment hearing in Olympia to receive testimony on whether the state should allow regulated (not civil liberty) home grow in the State of Washington. There were two kinds of testimony presented that I have not previously identified in my recent writing on the subject: the mobilization of the financial industry against democracy, and the “big picture” stakes of home grow as a step towards making peace with the plant, which several speakers mobilized but none so movingly as the former Deputy Director of the WSLCB, Randy Simmons.

Banking against democracy

The first, chronologically, was testimony by representatives of the I-502 banking industry. Salal Credit Union and Numerica Credit Union — representing the west and east sides of the State, respectively — both testified against home grow of any kind, suggesting that both institutions would withdraw their services from I-502 if the State went for home grow, because they considered Federal intervention on the basis of the Cole Memo to endanger their ability to do business. Given that 7 other States and the nation’s capital aren’t being threatened for having home grow, this argument seems either ill-informed or nakedly political.

In any case, it represents the first time I have seen a threat of extortion by the private sector against even the consideration of what might be in the public interest. It gives opponents of home grow in this State another political reason not to fairly consider whether prohibiting home grow is optimal as a social policy. Other States would do well to heed this development going forward: if banking opens up, which is necessary and desirable for legal cannabis markets, banking is going to favor the continuity of prohibition, which is unnecessary and undesirable for ending the drug war.

Home Grow as Free from Regulation as Possible is a Small Step towards Normalization of the Plant

Former Deputy Director Simmons’s testimony can be found at 1:01 of the archived video. It was remarkable to hear from someone who played such a positive role early in the I 502 implementation process, as the Board’s Deputy Director. More remarkable, to me, was the way he described the issue at hand as being about far more than home grow. I present his testimony transcribed below.

“Good morning Madam Chair, Members of the Board, my name is Randy Simmons. I am the former director of the Liquor and Cannabis Board, and I was the implementation manager of I-502. I know you’ll hear a lot of different opinions today and I want to let you know I respect all those opinions and am aware of the difficulty you have to make.

I’d like to present to you that I am in support of home grows as free of regulation as possible.

It’s been a long road I’ve been on since I left here. I watched as some of the best doctors in the world filled my wife with poison intended to kill cancer. I watched as she went through multiple surgeries, and then was burned to kill whatever was left. And that was done by what is probably doctors at the cancer center in the world. At the same time I watched this cancer research in London and Madrid and Paris find ways to slow this breast cancer disease in women, and we do nothing here. We need our universities and our scientists and frankly our pharmaceutical companies involved in this research, and we can’t do that unless this is removed from the Schedule I substance.

And I have no illusion that allowing home grows in Washington is going to remove this as a Schedule I substance.

But I do see it as one small step in the normalization of this plant that has beneficial medical treatment for people, so that one day the research finds not just the cannabinoid profile that slows the growth of cancer but can actually cure it. I never want to watch my grandchildren — my granddaughters — to have to deal with being told they have to deal with an aggressive Stage 3 cancer, and in order to give you the best chance to live, we have to poison you, mutilate your body, and burn [inaudible] …

All journeys begin with a small step, and I think allowing this normalization of home grows is a small step. Thank you.”

Analysis: Home Grow as a Small Step

Mr. Simmons’ testimony addressed home grow as a step towards “normalizing” the plant, a process of cultural change necessary for vital “big steps” to happen. He specifically refers to cancer research, which in his analysis (with which I agree) is being blocked by far more than legislative or Federal (in)action. He identifies the source of those blocks as cultural — we can’t get to the Big Steps of cancer research in this country until people understand cannabis as a plant, rather than an immanent threat to society which must be controlled.

It’s not enough to change laws. The work to be done is cultural, and what legal change can do is either open up avenues for cultural change or block them.

The refusal of a nominally rebellious State against Federal policy that dehumanizes its citizens (on immigration, on LGBTQ rights, on climate change, and so forth) to take “small steps” against the dehumanization of its citizens that want to grow a plant blocks broader cultural change towards peace instead of war, research instead of no research, banking instead of no banking, participation instead of bans or moratoria, parenting instead of policed parenting, and yes, in my opinion, consumer participation in a regulated market instead of what we have today, declining levels of participation int he regulated market.

The “small step” of home grow would signal a cultural change towards accommodation of the regulated system, and would actually increase banking profits, producer profits, retail profits, and sustainable taxation revenues. I argue here that the political forces using empirically unsupportable arguments like the fear of federal intervention are shooting themselves in the foot, because they do not understand the long term benefits of broad cultural acceptance of the plant upon which their industry is based.

The normalization of cannabis as a plant rather than a threat to society is the endgame, and I sure wish that politicians, industry, and banking understood how much it would be in their best interest to facilitate that, instead of contributing counterproductively and short-sightedly to the politics of fear.

 

Three Questions for the Reform Conference

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by Dominic Corva, Executive Director

This year, the International Drug Policy Reform Conference (Reform) will be taking place next week in Atlanta, Georgia. This post lets our readers know about CASP’s presence at the Conference and what I will be doing there, as a participant in a panel titled “How has the Drug War Reshaped Space, Place, and Relationships?”

There are three kinds of public events CASP gets invited to speak at. Industry events provide a platform for addressing cannabis policy and markets in a way that reflects our commitment to optimizing cannabis legalization as a strategy for ending the drug war. Academic events provide a platform for reflecting on and improving the models of the world I work with and encounter. And Policy events provide me with a platform for direct intervention into ongoing discussions of policy formation.

The Reform conference is a bit of a hybrid between Academic and Policy events. It’s an international NGO (nongovernmental organization) production, hosted by the Drug Policy Alliance and the ACLU, which often partners with the DPA on domestic efforts. You can see from the title of the panel how academic the conversation is to be on my panel, which could be the title of a panel at the annual Association of American Geographers (AAG) Conference I presented at for most of my academic life.

As a result, it’s probably the sort of panel that I feel most comfortable in. I’m not industry, and in Policy conferences where bureaucrats and policymakers dominate I’m usually the most radical voice in the room, since my central concern is ending the drug war rather than doing politics. Or bureaucracy.

This panel is especially cool because it’s a conversation, rather than a group of individual presentations. The moderator for the panel recently reached out to prepare for the conversation by posing three or four questions with which we would like to engage. I offer the questions I sent back, and the reasons for doing so, here:

What is the relationship between legalizing cannabis in certain places and ending the drug war — in those places but more broadly?
This question places CASP’s mission into the context of an international drug policy framework. Cannabis legalization to this point has until recently been “sold” –and funded — on the assumption that cannabis legalization is an important step towards ending the drug war. These days, it seems that it’s now being sold as an engine for economic growth and associated tax revenue. As a result, the policies being called for, designed and implemented don’t seem to be all that interested in removing criminal penalties altogether for cannabis-related activity. On the other hand, there is no doubt that significant room for exception to criminal penalties is opening up, especially from the perspective of say, the Philippines, where drug war crimes and outright genocidal State policy continue with the support and funding of the U.S. government. There also doesn’t seem to be much carry-over from ending the war on cannabis to ending the war on drugs, full stop. Is cannabis being carved out as a militant particularism, an exception that allows the drug war to continue unopposed? If it is, and key voices and actors in the U.S. are “co-opted” by letting them have theirs, does cannabis legalization mean the continuation of the drug war? These are difficult questions, but they must be considered given the evidence so far.
What is the relationship between (neo)liberalizing space and demobilizing the drug war?
This is a question that has to do with the relationship between economic governance and prohibition. My interest in the relationship between the drug war and economic liberalization was sparked by trying to puzzle through the tension between the promotion of liberty, via “free market” governance, and the promotion of authoritarian control on certain populations, during the latest period of pretty intense economic globalization (since the 1970s). Whose liberty matters, politically, under conditions of intense economic inequality that is supposedly being remediated by neoliberal market governance? The hollowing out of State (this term refers approximately to governments at large, not just to Federal States) revenues under conditions of privatization absolutely blew up during the financial crisis of the last decade. U.S. federal States like Washington want and need cannabis tax revenue to replace budget shortfalls that used to be covered by income taxes and Federal transfers. As a result, policy discourse about cannabis legalization explicitly condone the punishment of informal sector markets and actors to protect State-designated monopolies. That’s how we lost medical cannabis in Washington State.
How are processes of creative destruction associated with drug war zones?

“Creative destruction” is a political economy term I learned about from studying Karl Polanyi, the Austro-Hungarian economic historian. It means that there’s a cost to market formation — that previous market and social orders are destroyed to make way for new engines of growth. It’s usually associated with urban gentrification or crisis profiteering. Under conditions of prohibition, the whole world is a drug war zone, as anthropologist Howard Campbell observes, but some spots are hotter than others: borders, inner cities and so forth. This is a broader question for which cannabis legalization provides some insight, particularly with respect to who can own the means of cannabis production in highly controlled markets with high barriers to entry. Headlines splash how many jobs are created by such markets, but what goes unsaid is to whom the gains accrue. The democratic aspect of informal cannabis markets was that everyone could be an owner or take a much better margin of the flows than they could as a $15/hour waged laborer. This spread the economic benefits of market development much wider than under conditions where you need half a million or a regulatory job to make much of a living. At the same time, however, there is a lot of truth to the claim that legal cannabis displaces the ability of highly organized crime to make much off of cannabis, any more. Cartel profits don’t accrue to the little people so much, and while I insist that cartel profits have been dwindling under conditions of medical cannabis (with a far more democratic and widely shared economy), I can’t ignore the truth that in general, we want to destroy the ability of those who use violence to manage risk to make anything.

So, that’s it. Those are my questions for the panel, and my preliminary thoughts about them. It will take place next week, Thursday, in Atlanta, Georgia. I am grateful to the Drug Policy Alliance for covering my flight and hotel room, for full disclosure.

How has the Drug War Reshaped Space, Place, and Relationships?

Thursday, October 12th, 4:30-6:00pm | Dogwood B Room, Floor M1

From prison towns to million dollar blocks (where more than a million dollars is spent to incarcerate men from one city block), drug policy is shaping what our communities and relationships look like. This session will explore: How has the drug war reshaped geography in the U.S.? What impact do these changes have on individuals and families? How does spatial shifts over time affect communities most impacted by the war on drugs? What are some current projects and solutions underway to address these shifts in geography?

The Cannabis Alliance Letter on Home Grow

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by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

I reprint here, with permission, the letter drafted by the only Washington State I 502 trade group whose membership is dedicated to ending the drug war as well as optimizing legal cannabis policy and markets. Full disclosure: CASP is a member of this trade group, as a drug policy scholar and expert rather than as a direct industry stakeholder, and I played a central role in the committee that drafted this letter. Alliance Executive Director Lara Kaminsky, the author of the letter, is a member of the CASP Board.

The Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board PO Box 43080 Olympia, WA 98504 RE: Recreational Marijuana Home Grows Public Comment

The Cannabis Alliance

3233 S. Hanford St., Seattle, WA 98144

Email: info@thecannabisalliance.us

www.TheCannabisAlliance.us

October 2, 2017

Dear Board and Staff of the WSLCB, Please accept these comments as the official recommendation of The Cannabis Alliance, the state’s largest cannabis industry/advocacy group representing the largest number of licensed cannabis business owners in the state.

The Cannabis Alliance helped facilitate an internal committee of members and additional stakeholders to assist and advise us with our recommendation on recreational marijuana home grows. The board of The Alliance unanimously approved the recommendation of the committee and is submitting it here for the record. First, we would like to clearly outline the scope of work mandated by the legislation that was enacted in 2017. The legislation directs the WSLCB to “conduct a study of regulatory options for the legalization of marijuana plant possession and cultivation by recreational marijuana users.” (Emphasis added) The study must take into account the “Cole Memo,” issued by the United State Department of Justice in 2013, which outlines the federal government’s enforcement priorities in states where medical or recreational marijuana has been legalized or decriminalized.

After reviewing the directive it became clear which of the three options proposed by the WSLCB The Cannabis Alliance would support. To review the three options are:

Option 1: Tightly Regulated Recreational Marijuana Home Grows Option

2: Local Control (or regulation) of Recreational Marijuana Home Grows

Option 3. Recreational Home Grows are Prohibited (or the status quo)

The Cannabis Alliance is recommending Option #3, or the status quo. The reasons for us doing so are very important to communicate.

1. The home grow issue is a civil liberty issue. It is outside the purview of the LCB, as a regulatory agency, to license people to grow a plant on a limited scale in the privacy of their own home. The jurisdiction of the LCB is the regulation of  business practices of licensed entities engaged in commercial sales, not the regulation of private citizens.

2. There is no other situation that exists, in any state that allows home grow, for the home grow to be registered with or regulated by a state agency.

3. None of the other states have run afoul of the Cole memo. The Cole memo is not supposed to be used to write legislation rather it was written to protect states rights.

We need to be clear that The Cannabis Alliance is NOT opposing home grow; and we are certainly not “opposing” home grow because our businesses feel threatened by it. Rather, we fully support home grow as a civil liberties issue, of which there was no such option presented.

We appreciate the opportunity to comment and want to reiterate our strong desire to see adults granted the ability to grow in small quantities at home. As stated by Alison Holcomb “The primary motivation for putting I-502 on the ballot was to end the criminalization of cannabis use, growing, and provision, and begin moving us in a new, public health-focused direction. Prohibiting adults from cultivating their own cannabis for personal use is inconsistent with that overarching goal.”

We are committed to continued collaboration and are happy to answer any questions.

Sincerely, Lara Kaminsky Executive Director The Cannabis Alliance

Don’t let Fear of the Feds Block Civil Liberty Home Grow

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by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

My previous two posts addressed the barriers to change embodied in the Washington State Liquor Control Board’s regulated home grow feasibility study; and offered the comments of I 502 architect Alison Holcomb as material evidence that their language concerning the “spirit of I 502” is objectionable and must be removed before submitting to the legislature.

It’s important to remember as the public hearing approaches, that the WSLCB is asking for feedback on their regulated home grow options, not asking for public input on how to do home grow. Thus, how you respond is very important. There’s room to note that civil liberty home grow, which is what is normal in 7 other states and the nation’s capital, is the only way forward for home grow.

But it’s always important to push back against the arguments presented against home grow, in the feasibility study but also, the words being spoken by stakeholders against home grow to whom the WSLCB listens disproportionately, on account of the lobbying dollars and expertise.

The Feds are not coming after State-compliant legal cannabis businesses

I’ve said it before, at the beginning of the year when now-fired White House staffer Sean Spicer sparked a panic, and I’ll say it again — and you should say it to the LCB.

The Feds are not coming after State-compliant legal cannabis businesses

That’s right. Seven States and the District of Colombia have civil liberties home grow and The Feds are not coming after State-compliant legal cannabis businesses.

Don’t let Washington State’s industry lobbyists tell the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board that they will. Because they won’t, no matter what Jeff Sessions “quips” about (as Cole memo author James Cole characterized it very, very recently).

The most influential industry voice to the WSLCB is the Washington Cannabusiness Association, or WACA. Their spokesperson was quoted last week objecting to home grow, regulated or otherwise, on the fearful grounds that doing so might invite Federal intervention against Washington State’s legal market. I’ve covered this argument before, but see for yourself how WACA is using that argument in its response to the feasibility study:

“If you ask licensed pot growers and retail owners, many of them are opposed.

“Our members are very concerned about the possibility of loosening regulations to allow the general public to grow cannabis at home,” Aaron Pickus said.

Pickus is speaking for The Washington Cannabusiness Association [WACA], which represents about 70 marijuana companies. The groups says they are more worried about the feds than any financial impact to the industry.”

Unfortunately, WACA is not the only industry group that refuses to support home grow. Even industry groups with (some) leadership that insists on civil liberty home grow, like the Cannabis Farmer’s Council (CFC), has to follow the direction of its membership, consisting of producers who may view home grow as competition.

In fact, the Cannabis Alliance is the only industry group pushing civil liberty home grow to the WSLCB and the Legislature. I will be posting their letter to the WSLCB concerning home grow shortly.

 

Alison Holcomb RE: I-502’s Intent and Home Grow from 9/5/17

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[Editor’s note: Washington NORML asked I-502 architect Alison Holcomb to weigh in on the intent of I-502, and its relationship with the prospect of adult home grow in this State. These comments were shared with me, and I asked her permission to publish here, which I do now, with gratitude -DC]

by Alison Holcomb

Personal cultivation by adults absolutely is in the spirit of the new approach envisioned by the drafters and sponsors of I-502. The primary motivation for putting I-502 on the ballot was to end the criminalization of cannabis use, growing, and provision, and begin moving us in a new, public health-focused direction. Prohibiting adults from cultivating their own cannabis for personal use is inconsistent with that overarching goal.

When we began drafting I-502 in December 2010, California’s Proposition 19 had just failed at the ballot, and we were particularly sensitive to voter attitudes on policy details. Our polling indicated that Washington voters were significantly uncomfortable with home growing at that time. When asked whether “Allowing adults to grow marijuana at home and share small amounts with other adults” made them more or less comfortable with legalization, the data suggested including this provision could dangerously undermine chances of passage:

Much more Comf: 8

Smwht More Comf: 12

Smwt Less Comf: 13

Much Less Comf: 27

No Diff: 39

DK/Ref: 2

Total more: 20

Total Less: 40

More-Less: -20

As a starting point, legalizing marijuana for adults didn’t have overwhelming support in 2010: “Regardless of how you feel about different specific measures, do you think marijuana should be legalized for adults?”

Yes, strongly: 32

Yes, not strongly: 17

No, not strongly: 9

No, strongly: 39

DK/Ref: 4

Total Yes: 49

Total No: 48

We decided it was important to draft I-502 carefully and conservatively to address not only health and safety risks posed by an untested policy change but also the political risks inherent in asking voters to pass a state law in tension with federal law, and one that had never been adopted by any other jurisdiction in the world.

Since I-502’s passage and implementation, Washington voters’ support for legalization has grown. With every other legal state including home growing for personal use, the political risk of making this adjustment for Washington residents is minimal to nonexistent, and the policy upsides are significant. In addition to the benefits for patients who use cannabis for medical purposes (see e.g., my arguments here and here), allowing adults to grow their own personal supply of cannabis would serve as a check on industry control of cannabis quality and price. Most importantly, treating adults as criminals for growing cannabis for personal use in the privacy of their own homes is fundamentally inconsistent with the principles of liberty on which this country was founded.

LCB Home Grow Study: Option 3 the Status Quo

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by Dominic Corva, Social Science Research Director

After further review, it’s very clear how to respond to the WSLCB regulated home grow options. I choose, if it matters, Option 3, the status quo. This post is about why, and to ask my readers to shape their feedback accordingly.

The WSLCB has delivered a perfectly reasonable set of options to the legislature’s mandate that they carry out a study on the feasibility of regulated home grow. They have been asked only to deliver options for a kind of home grow that is unlike any of the other 8 states and the nation’s capital, in that it would not apply to all adult citizens residing in the State. It would apply only to those who apply for it, as a privilege that could be taken away or prevented by the entity that manages those permits, whether it be local law enforcement or the WSLCB.

By contrast, all other State home grow laws allow for home grow as a right. For them, being an adult citizen means having the liberty to grow a few plants without having to ask for permission or be tracked or be subject to anything that would infringe on the right to privacy. Home grow in all the other states is a civil liberty.

The WSLCB is not an arm of the State concerned with the expansion or protection of civil liberties. It is an entity charged with creating, regulating, and policing legal cannabis businesses. Thus, the stakeholders they consult about home grow are businesses, not civil liberties watchdogs like the ACLU, which funded our State legalization initiative. I 502 was, and should always be, a civil liberties law that SECONDARILY creates a market from which the State can tap revenue.

The WSLCB is institutionally incapable of prioritizing the civil liberties of adult citizens assumed responsible. As a private police force, it can and does assume adult citizens are potential vectors of illegality, not stakeholders in a civil liberties experiment.

As a business regulator, it has no expertise or mandate to govern adult civil liberties. Its Board contains no representatives of any group that has either. Thus, the proper entity for considering and designing adult home grow as a civil liberty in the State of Washington is the Legislature.

The Legislature must consider more than just options for regulated home grow. They must carefully study the Cole Memo and understand how its parameters allow for adult home grow as a civil liberty.

The Cole Memo is a set of guidelines, not a blueprint for making law or policy. It is exclusively about the legal markets regulated by entities such as the WSLCB. The concern for diversion is exclusively about making sure each State’s regulated cannabis markets do not become mixed up with black market activity — diversion into, and out of, the regulated market, with clear emphasis on diversion to other states.

An adult homegrow provision in this State carves out a space that is simply out of the jurisdiction of the WSLCB. Adult home grow, as a civil liberty, would be unregulated, because adult home grow would not be part of the regulated system. No need to worry about policing diversion, because no one would be diverting from a regulated system. That’s how it works in 8 other States and the District of Columbia. It would literally be none of the WSLCB’s business.

We need our Legislature to listen to civil liberties experts, particularly those associated with the success of I 502 like the ACLU, Alison Holcomb, and even Rick Steves. Ask them what the spirit of I 502 is, whether adult use home grow like adult use possession, sharing, and consumption should be decriminalized.

The reason why the ACLU will respond quite differently from the WSLCB, or the industry stakeholders to whom they might listen, is because the ACLU has experts in the history and practice of illicit drug prohibition, and must include that expertise in any consideration of the matter at hand.

It would be much more helpful if the Legislature could consult a standing body of drug policy experts that have published on and studied racial disparities and punishment in the U.S. This is perhaps the fundamental thing missing from Washington State’s approach to legalizing cannabis: the ACLU is never consulted. By default, only the legal cannabis police are consulted, and they interpret their mandate broadly enough to consider the risk of adult home grow as an exceptional threat to Cole Memo compliance on the one hand; and the legal cannabis industry on the other.

There are many more arguments that can and will be made. But these are the fundamental ones.

I 502, and cannabis legalization at large, are about promoting civil liberties and reducing the scope of the punitive State, which in all cases increases racial disparity because of structural racism. Every other State subject to the Cole memo guidelines has created adult home grow as a civil liberty, and it is highly unlikely that following this path would invite Federal intervention. Finally, the expressed concerns about diversion in the Cole Memo are about policing the integration of organized crime into State-legal markets, and are not concerned at all with what happens on a vanishingly small scale in the privacy of adult homes.

So I urge all of my readers who are interested in providing feedback to the WSLCB on its home grow options to choose option 3, the status quo, because adult use home grow should be a civil liberties issue, not a regulated business issue. We thank them for doing what they were asked by the Legislature to do, and choose to focus instead on working for Legislative change, including the two existing civil liberties home grow bills still in process that will be taken up again in January.