Senate OKs change to I-502

With remarkable speed, the Legislature approved a technical change in the state’s new legalized marijuana law that takes the plant’s chemistry into account.

The biggest obstacle may have been the reading of the bill title in the Senate, where official reader Ken Edmonds stumbled over tetrahydracannibanol, the chemical in question.

Legislation does not come with a pronunciation guide, and Edmonds is not of an age where familiarity with that substance makes the word roll trippingly off the tongue. It’s possible that some of the senators who chuckled at his struggle were more familiar.

The only discouraging word on the quick fix for the law came from Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, who said he didn’t favor Initiative 502 in the first place, and the problem was an example of what can go wrong with a ballot measure, which isn’t subjected to the scrutiny and debate of a legislative bill.

“You never know what you’re going to get when you vote for an initiative,” Hargrove warned. “This was a flawed initiative, and now we’re having to use an extraordinary step here to fix it.”

But Hargrove voted yes for the change, as did everyone else in the Senate.