Sen. Kohl-Welles’ New Bill Firms Up Medical Marijuana Regs

by on January 20, 2011

Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles

The 36th District’s Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles may feel like a legislator’s job is never done. A long-time supporter of medical marijuana, she watched last April as Governor Gregoire signed  Senate Bill 5798 into law, which widened the scope of medical professionals who could legally prescribe medical marijuana for patients suffering from debilitating and terminal illnesses.

But she also read, no doubt, the headlines about the raids on patients’ homes and dispensaries, as agreement on medical marijuana’s legality is not shared with the same force or fervor statewide. Since 1998, people have been regularly arrested for taking I-692 at its word. This year, joining with Rep. Jim Moeller, she’s introduced new legislation that tries to make crystal clear Washington’s existing medical marijuana laws. 

“Senate Bill 5073 and House Bill 1100 would establish a regulatory system for the sale and purchase of medical marijuana for qualifying patients,” says Kohl. It contains a sales tax exemption for patients, but dispensaries would have to pay a B&O tax.

Law enforcement would have to consult a voluntary registry of patients before kicking doors down on suspicion of marijuana use. The legislation defines “licensed dispenser” (regulated by the Department of Health), “licensed processor” (Department of Agriculture), and “licensed producer” (Department of Agriculture), and specifically protects them from being hauled into court due to their licensed activities. 

“Other provisions include protecting parental rights of medical marijuana patients and protections against the workplace discrimination of patients,” adds Kohl-Welles. “The current legal limits of up to 15 plants and up to 24 ounces of useable marijuana per patient and one patient per provider remain intact.”

This is likely music to the ears of Sensible Washington, the backers of last year’s I-1068 legalization push. They were criticized last year for not including a regulatory structure in the initiative–though Washington has a strict “single issue” rule to forestall omnibus initiative-making. Now, with Kohl-Welles advancing the regulatory side, they can revisit I-1068′s outright legalization of marijuana in 2011. (They’re also looking for new fans on Facebook, if you’re into that sort of thing.) 

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5 thoughts on “Sen. Kohl-Welles’ New Bill Firms Up Medical Marijuana Regs”

  1. Hopefully this passes without much of a fight. Next we need a proper decriminalization bill to be introduced and actually make it out of committee.

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  2. CANNABIS Many responsible physicians believe, on sound medical evidence, that cannabis is useful in the prevention of blindness from glaucoma and to suppress the nausea incident to chemotherapy. But if they say so, they’ll be sending a dangerous message to kids or so say our politicians. This politically and journalistically generated hysteria obscures the few solid facts we have about drugs and addiction. The paramount fact is that, socially, the costliest problem drugs are nicotine and alcohol. Yet our politicians are soft on tobacco and alcohol while spending billions of dollars of our tax money yearly arresting American citizens for using marijuana. Most of them seem to doubt that nicotine and alcohol are addictive, and welcome huge campaign contributions from these industries. The only proven counter strategy, as in the surgeon generals’ long and persistent campaigns against cigarettes, is truthful patient education and medical treatment. Law enforcement tactics as a solution for social problems have proven time and again to be a failure. The 18th Amendment era can hardly be ignored as an example of the social cost of Prohibition, which gave America bootlegging, mobsterism and mass civil disobedience in addition to the eternal problem of alcohol abuse. Our politicians merely refuse, as do many, to see the clear parallel between that “experiment noble in purpose” and the “war on drugs” that we are losing. Like Prohibition it also is a war against human folly and, as such, is lost from the start.

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  4. This is in regards to House Bill 1100 and Senate Bill 5073

    Please, please, please help these bills pass, These bill will add much needed protections to those with serious medical problems who are allergic or have bad reactions to regular pharmaceutical, .

    Washington state is sending its sick, disabled and elderly through the court system costing these already discomforted people in some cases 10,s of thousands of dollars just to prove their medical necessity when they already hold the piece of paper signed by their doctors that the state requires.

    As is our current medical cannabis laws seem to benefit the police and court systems more then the people they were meant to protect, that is the sick and disabled.

    To help emphasize why we need this bill passed you should do some searching in the news and you will see that police are out with sub-machine guns kicking in patients doors, knocking elderly people down to the ground and holding guns to their heads and shouting at them over such little evidence as “suspicious smells and suspicious fan noises observable outside the residence”

    Don’t believe me? The Seattle PI has one such story:
    http://www.seattlepi.com/local/429222_pot29.html

    This is only one of the reported cases, this happens to often by our over zealous law enforcement agencies who seem to have rather little in the way of common sense, respect for individuals civil rights , or humanistic compassion in these regards.

    Cannabis has been a medicine documented in effective treatment of many illnesses for over 5000 years, pharmaceutical Marinol is not the answer, it is not the same thing as whole herbal cannabis, Marinol is missing the important cannabinoid makeup found in natural whole cannabis that helps with muscle spasms, nausea, severe pain, etc without making the patient feel worse, the other cannabinoids like CBN CBD help create a balance in that is not available in Marinol, whole herb medicines like this are needed for people with bodies that are already damaged by and sensitive to synthetic chemicals.

    The sick and disabled should not have to stress and worry about the possibility of facing one of these military styled swat raids of their families and homes followed by court and prosecution and expensive legal defense for using and growing a garden herb that their doctor authorized. Not in a free society anyway…

    Thank you again Senator Kohl-Welles for your common sense and compassion in your work on these bills, Thank you also Senators Delvin, Keiser, Regala, Pflug, Murray, Tom,
    Kline, McAuliffe, and Chase Thanks to you also Representatives Moeller, Fitzgibbon, Billig, and Santos.

    I pray that the rest of the legislature will have the wisdom to see the sense in passing these bills.

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  5. Pingback: Campaign to Legalize Marijuana Relights at Both Ends | The SunBreak

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