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About 556,000 people use marijuana in Washington.
Journal file photo
continued from page C-4
indicator of criminal and violent behavior, increase
or decrease? Will banks and credit unions be able
to take the accounts of marijuana businesses? How
much money will it deposit into state coffers? Will
more youths start using marijuana? Will more peo-
ple report becoming dependent on marijuana? What
happens to the state's medical marijuana dispensa-
ries? Will the federal government, which considers
marijuana an illegal drug with no medicinal value
and with a high potential for abuse, allow Washing-
ton and Colorado to continue on this course in the
coming years?
The issues that separate the federal government
from Washington and Colorado on marijuana are
as knotty as a 7-year-old's fishing line.
"The pages of history haven't been written on
this," U.S. Rep. Denny Heck, D-Olympia, told the
Mason County Journal. He represents the 10th Con-
gressional District, which includes Shelton, Olym-
pia and southern parts of Tacoma. "We're engaged
in an experiment in Washington and Colorado. In
standing up a legal adult recreational marijuana
market in a way that's safe for the public, there's
no guarantee of success. It will not be a straight
line. There will be fits and starts. Fortunately in
our state we've had an unbelievably dedicated Li-
quor Control Board that has been very focused on
doing this right and always, always, always with
public safety in mind."
ABSOLUTELY UNPRECEDENTED
Marijuana legalization has never been tried on
this immense a scale. It's not legal in Amsterdam --
it's only tolerated -- and Uruguay, which legalized
marijuana in 2013, hasn't begun legal sales. Wash-
ington's (and Colorado's) population of pot users and
future pot users are the test bacteria in a cultural
Petri dish, and the results of this experiment will be
analyzed and fought over by governments and their
citizens around the world for years to come. It also
will deter or encourage other states to pursue legal-
ization; Alaska, California and Oregon are among
the next states where legalization initiatives could
soon be put before voters. In a few years, it's pos-
sible that legalized marijuana could stretch along
the West Coast from Barrow in the north, hopscotch
over British Columbia, and continue from Point Rob-
erts onto San Diego.
STATE'S MARIJUANA USERS
How many people use marijuana in Washington
state? About 556,000.
That's the number of people in Washington who
reported using marijuana or hash (a distillate of
marijuana) in the previous month, according to a
survey conducted in 2010 and 2011 by the National
Survey on Drug Use and Health. But, as a 2013
RAND Corporation study pointed out, "... self-re-
port surveys typically underestimate consumption.
Further, marijuana use has generally been rising,
and these figures represent use in 2010 and 2011,
not 2013. Thus, the unadjusted figures from the
2010/2011 NSDUH likely understate the number of
past-month users in 2013."
That 556,000 figure led RAND, which was one
of the partners in the Liquor Control Board's mari-
juana fact-finding team, to realize that people in
Washington consume way more marijuana than
once thought. RAND doubled the estimate of the
amount of marijuana needed per year to feed the
recreational market in Washington. The Washing-
ton Office of Financial Management had initially
estimated marijuana consumption in the state
at 85 metric tons, based on the assumption that
363,000 people in the state were past-month users
of marijuana. But the new figure bumped RAND's
median estimate to about 175 metric tons.
One hundred seventy-five metric tons.
That's the approximate weight of 18 full-grown
male orcas.
The state has nearly 7 million people, so we're
likely a few points shy of 10 percent of the state's
BANNED SUBSTANCES IN THE UNITED STATES
Here's the list of controlled substances under the U.S. Controlled Sub-
stances Act, which became law in 1970. The schedule is ranked from
the drugs considered most dangerous, Schedule 1, to least danger-
ous, Schedule V. Note that alcohol, the most abused substance in the
United States, is not listed:
SCHEDULE I
Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with
no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.
Schedule I drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug sched-
ules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence.
Some examples of Schedule I drugs are: heroin, lysergic acid dieth-
ylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), 3,4-methylenedioxymetham-
phetarnine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote
SCHEDULE II
Schedule II drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs
with a high potential for abuse, less abuse potential than Schedule I
drugs, with use potentially leading to severe psychological or physi-
cal dependence. These drugs are also considered dangerous. Some
examples of Schedule II drugs are cocaine, methamphetamine,
methadone, hydromorphone (Dilaudid), meperidine (Demerol),
oxycodone (OxyContin), fentanyl, Dexedrine, Adderall, and Ritalin.
SCHEDULE III
Schedule III drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs
with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological de-
pendence. Schedule III drugs abuse potential is less than Schedule I
and Schedule II drugs but more than Schedule IV. Some examples of
Schedule Ill drugs are combination products with less than 15 mil-
ligrams of hydrocodone per dosage unit (Vicodin), products contain-
ing less than 90 milligrams of codeine per dosage unit (Tylenol with
codeine), ketamine, anabolic steroids, testosterone.
SCHEDULE IV
Schedule IV drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs
with a low potential for abuse and low risk of dependence. Some
examples of Schedule IV drugs are Xanax, Soma, Darvon, Darvocet,
Valium, Ativan, Talwin, Ambien.
SCHEDULE V
Schedule V drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with
lower potential for abuse than Schedule IV and consist of prepara-
tions containing limited quantities of certain narcotics. Schedule V
drugs are generally used for antidiarrheal, antitussive, and analgesic
purposes. Some examples of Schedule V drugs are cough prepara-
tions with less than 200 milligrams of codeine or per 100 milliliters
(Robitussin AC), Lomotil, Motofen, Lyrica, Parepectolin.
Thursday, Aug. 28, 2014 - Mason County Journal - Page C-5
population reporting using marijuana in the previ-
ous month.
Dozens of municipalities in the state have banned
marijuana sales, including unincorporated Pierce
County, Wenatchee, Kent and Yakima, but politi-
cians in Mason County -- after some fits and starts
in July -- and Thurston County have given the busi-
nesses the go-ahead. Mason and Thurston county
voters endorsed 1-502 by nearly identical margins --
55 percent and 56 percent, respectively. The Shel-
ton City Commission and the Mason County Board
of Commissioners both approved regulations in late
2013 governing the establishment of businesses
where marijuana could be grown, processed and sold.
In Shelton, after public hearings and wrangling
over zoning rules, which mainly focused on ensur-
ing that any marijuana business didn't fall within a
1,000-foot exclusion zone of places such as schools,
parks and day care centers, the city commission
approved rules that effectively limited those busi-
nesses to a chunk of land that's a few blocks north
of the Gateway Center, where Olympic Highway
North meets U.S. Highway 101.
"There's very limited opportunities to locate
these facilities in Shelton," Steve Goins, the city's
director of community and economic development,
told the Journal in November 2013.
The Mason County Board of Commissioners also
approved regulations governing marijuana busi-
nesses, allowing them in rural residential, rural
commercial and other commercial and industrial
zones. Of the Mason County applicants for retail
stores who finished in the top five of the Liquor
Control Board's lottery, three of them are in Belfair.
However, the Mason County Commission back-
tracked after a group of neighbors on Sells Drive
near Shelton complained about a marijuana pro-
duction facility that had been licensed near their
neighborhood. Commissioners voted 2-1 on July
1 to slap a moratorium on such enterprises in ru-
ral residential zones, but the board reversed itself
three weeks later and lifted the moratorium.
STRANGE TIMES, INDEED
Focusing on the necessarily mundane matters of
creating a legal marijuana industry in Washington
-- zoning, banking, licensing, regulations -- makes
it easy to overlook what a remarkable position our
state and its residents find themselves in the sum-
mer of 2014. Who among us could have imagined
10 years ago that we'd be living in a state where
an officer could find up to 1 ounce of marijuana on
someone and then hand it back to the person?
How did we travel from a time when U.S. Com-
missioner of Narcotics Harry Anslinger could write
in a book published in 1953 that "... marihuana
has no therapeutic value, and its use is therefore
always an abuse and a vice ... In the earliest stag-
es of intoxication the will power is destroyed and
inhibitions and restraints are released; the moral
barricades are broken down and often debauchery
and sexuality results. Where mental instability is
inherent, the behavior is generally violent. An ego-
tist will enjoy delusions of grandeur, the timid in-
dividual will suffer anxiety, and the aggressive one
often will resort to acts of violence and crime. Dor-
mant tendencies are released and while the subject
may know what is happening, he has become pow-
erless to prevent it. Constant use produces incapac-
ity for work and a disorientation of purpose. The
drug has a corroding effect on the body and on the
mind, weakening the entire physical system and of-
ten leading to insanity after prolonged use."
Really?
We've moved from then to now because of people
who don't use marijuana.
For decades, the effort to legalize marijuana was
largely driven by people who smoked marijuana.
They, understandably, didn't like the idea of being
arrested for having it. What shifted in the past 10 to
15 years was the support of people who didn't smoke
marijuana and who believed the costs to our society
and to our citizens wasn't worth it anymore.
In 1969, when Gallup first conducted a national poll
that asked whether marijuana should be legalized, 12
percent of respondents said "yes." It's reasonable to sus-
pect most of those who said "yes" smoked marijuana. In
2013, 58 percent of those surveyed said they favored
legalizing marijuana. When you consider that less than
10 percent of the people in the U.S. reported using mar-
ijuana in the previous month, it's obvious that nonus-
ers were responsible for that spurt of support.
Marijuana legalization and gay marriage, which
has followed a similar escalating line of support in
the past 10 years, are.legal in this state because of
the support from people who are not pot smokers
and who aren't gay. And what's driven that change
is more people becoming aware that pot smokers,
and homosexuals, are our neighbors, our relatives,
our friends, and our work colleagues.
We've traveled so far that we now have a U.S. pres-
ident telling the New Yorker magazine that "I don't
think it [marijuana] is more dangerous than alcohol."
This is the new state of marijuana.