I Misunderstood HB 1249
On January 16, 2023 I made a testimony to the House Regulated Substances and Gaming Committee as being opposed to House Bill 1249 ("Relating to limits on the sale and possession of retail cannabis products"). I had testified that I was opposed because "the revisions are written in a needlessly confusing way," which was demonstrated by the fact that I read the bill several times, read it aloud to others, and still misinterpreted the language and intent of HB 1249.
The clause that had caught my attention and prompted my tirade had proposed to revise the possession limit for liquid edibles to "two hundred milligrams of THC within a cannabis-infused product in liquid form IF the product is packaged in individual units containing no more than four milligrams of THC per unit." Raising the potency limit of all edibles to 200mg of THC per unit is one of PURP's specific long term goals, so naturally I wanted to support this bill, but misunderstood that "if" as meaning this law would apply to all liquid edibles on the market.
I thought some butthole was trying to ruin liquid edibles by forcing all their producers to switch to 4mg individual units (which, given Washington's cannabis legislation history, I don't think that interpretation was farfetched). Because reducing cannabis packaging waste is also part of PURP's long term goals, I opposed the bill because of my perception of the environmental impact of requiring 50 pieces of packaging for a single 200mg product... we want to be able to legally purchase a single bottle of liquid edibles with 200mg of THC.
Though I had suspected there was some sort of special interest involved in the crafting of this bill, up until I heard the bill sponsor and supporting testimonies it was not entirely clear to me that HB 1249 was created to support a single product line for a single company selling 2.5mg liquid edibles in 6 packs of 12oz cans. The bill is attempting to create an exception to the 72-ounce liquid edible purchase limit for products that contain 4mg of THC or less per unit so that customers can buy up to 50 cans of this product at one time.
After testifying in opposition to the bill, I looked at the bill text again and [finally] noticed one word that changes my entire perspective: "unless." In the clause just prior to the one I mentioned, it also proposes to revise the possession limit for liquid edibles to "seventy-two ounces of cannabis-infused product in liquid form UNLESS the cannabis-infused product in liquid form is packaged in individual units containing no more than four milligrams of THC per unit." Simply put, that means this bill would not impose any additional regulations on existing liquid edibles we currently enjoy, it would essentially just allow the consumer to purchase eight 6-packs of [that specific brand's] low-dose liquid edibles at a time.
Upon learning who this bill was written for, I actually went on public record saying that I was a huge fan of the specific products under discussion and that "they're bomb"— which I stand by that— though I still don't think it's an efficient use of time to push single issue bills to benefit just one company. If anything, we'd prefer that single issue bills benefit the greater cannabis economy (in terms of maximum benefit for the consumers), but in retrospect there's nothing in this bill I specifically oppose aside from the fact that it indirectly gives liquid edible producers permission to use more packaging. I own my mistake, and lend HB 1249 and SB 5340 my support.
But we do need to raise the potency limit to 200mg for all edibles, and we do need to reduce cannabis packaging waste. We're not giving up on those issues.
