Spin Control: State struggles to track data on all the legal pot, study says

Washington is having trouble keeping track of all the pot it grows – the legal kind raised and harvested by licensed farms, turned into marketable items by licensed processors and sold in licensed retail marijuana stores.

Those businesses may be growing and processing two to three times as much legal marijuana as is being bought in the licensed stores, a new study suggests.

So what happens to the rest? No one can say for sure.

The data-tracking system used by the agency that regulates those businesses, the Liquor and Cannabis Board, allows for “a high level of uncertainty” about the amount of extra marijuana and where it goes, according to a newly completed study by the Rand Corporation and reported last week to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee.

It’s not the first time the marijuana data reported by the board has come under question. Last year, a consultant hired by the board called the data incomplete and unreliable, Susannah Pratt, a committee staff member, said.

The board itself has recognized their data collection shortcomings and proposed getting legislative approval – and funding – to look for and implement a new system.

By 2031.

The Legislature told the board it needs a plan for a better data system by the end of this year, which should be in place by the end of next year.

That’s not feasible by the end of 2026, the board countered. Maybe by the end of 2027, if the Legislature comes through with the money, Rachel Swanner, the board’s chief financial officer, told the committee.

The board should deliver a full management plan – not just a budget request – by the end of this year or next January, Rep. Jerry Pollet, D-Seattle, the audit committee board chairman, said.

Committee members struggled to understand the board’s struggles with keeping track of its data. Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, suggested the board just use Excel, to which all the licensees have easy access.

“Why do we need an elaborate system to keep track of this?” he asked.

It’s more than just the roughly 1,000 licensed growers and processors, and the 500 or so retail licensees, Mark Webster, the board’s legislative director, said.

It’s a matter of keeping track of every plant those growers start from a seedling and every bud that grows on each plant that gets sent to a processor and turned into a product, Swanner added. For that they need a more complicated system.

Rep. April Berg, D-Mill Creek, still was skeptical. Other states can track data on their products, she said.

“We’re not the first state to legalize cannabis,” Berg said. “We know there are workable systems out there.”

Actually, Washington was the first, along with Colorado, to legalize recreational marijuana for adults in 2012. But that fact doesn’t weigh in the board’s favor considering arguably they’ve had more time than most other states to find a better way to track things.

All this unaccounted -for marijuana raises three concerns. One is that because marijuana is heavily taxed, the state could be missing out on a chunk of change. Swanner argued that’s not the case because the system that collects the tax money is separate from the system that records the data.

Another is the fear that unsold legal marijuana will find its way into the illegal side of the market. One of the selling points of Initiative 502, which voters passed handily in 2012, was that regulated legal marijuana would kill or at least cripple the market for black -market pot.

The final concern is that an overabundance of marijuana will drive prices down for the growers and processors. Overproduction of marijuana is not unique to Washington, Webster told the committee. Oregon reportedly has the same oversupply of twice as much produced as sold, and some states have an even larger imbalance.

But a glut on the market makes this a challenging time for one of the state’s other marijuana plans, a social equity initiative that sets aside a certain number of new licenses for minority applicants who were more adversely affected by criminal laws when the drug was illegal. Ten licenses for growers and processors are set aside for social equity applicants this year, but they will likely face “challenging market conditions” when starting up, the Rand report suggested.

Not that 509

Spokanites who find themselves on the West Side this summer might catch a commercial urging drivers to “509 it!”

This is not a suggestion that one should head back over the Cascades to the East Side’s area code, or to drive as crazy as some folks in Spokane are known to do.

It’s a reference to a new link between Interstate 5 and SeaTac that just opened as a way to ease traffic to and from around the airport. The new link is part of state Highway 509. It’s designed as a toll road, but is free for the summer to get drivers used to it.