Washington Legislature Screws Up Patient Access to Clones

By OCC Staff

Washington, in a move reminiscent of a school district bungling of a fundraiser, made a mistake in their recent legislation that may leave a huge group of medical marijuana patients struggling to find a source for their plant clones and seeds.

Fortunately, Oregon is full of marijuana clones and seeds, but they are truly only accessible to the medical market thus far, not the recreational, since few recreational licenses have been issued to date. Another barrier is the federal crime that occurs when a person carries a cannabis plant across a state line. Since it is still a federal felony to transport a Class I substance, which marijuana remains, under the Substance Control Act…well, you get the picture. There is no legal way to get plants from Oregon to Washington.

From Lukas Barfield at Ganjapreneur.com:

According to Mikhail Carpenter, spokesman for the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB), SB 5052 allows patients who are part of a LCB-regulated collective garden to buy clones from licensed I-502 producers. The law is silent, however, on where the vast majority of medical cannabis patients will access clones after the transition.

At the moment, patients can purchase clones at an ever-decreasing number of medical cannabis shops and at local medical cannabis farmers markets, such as the Patient Cannabis Exchange located in Tacoma, WA. Chuck Green, who runs the Patient Cannabis Exchange and owns Clones Northwest, said he will sell more than 200 clones in a week.

“Patients aren’t going to have a choice but to go to the black market,” Green said. “It’s the only place they’ll be able to get new starts. People are really starting to get nervous with July 1st right around the corner, and still no one knows how this is going to work.

The LCB said they are working with their legal team to find a fix, but at the moment there remains no solution.

The idea of well regulated cannabis was obviously not meant to imply that the regulatory operations would be smooth. Au contraire, my friend, the purpose was to obviously prevent easy access. To that end, Washington has made great strides.

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