Update Sept. 6, 2012: An earlier version of this article misquoted Councilman Randy Hynek in regards to marijuana dispensary options for cancer patients. The article has been revised for accuracy.
Sumner’s City Council voted unanimously Aug. 20 to enact a six-month moratorium on businesses related to medicinal marijuana. It is the third time Sumner has enacted such a moratorium since July 2011.
The moratorium was passed again due to a continued ambiguity regarding which marijuana distribution methods are allowed under state law, City Attorney Brett Vinson said.
“This matter on the moratorium has come to the council on several occasions,” he said. “The moratorium put in place has been allowed to lapse so that we might have…clarification (from the state).
“Occasionally that clarification has not come back from the state, it’s come back a little more muddled.”
An initiative allowing the use and possession of medical marijuana by patients of certain conditions was originally passed in 1998. The law did not extend amnesty against possession charges, but rather allowed an affirmative defense to patients who received a note from an approved health care provider and registered with the Department of Health.
The law allows for designated providers of medical marijuana, essentially patients who also provide the plant to another patient and are thus allowed to have double the approved amount of plants and/or harvested cannabis. But the law says nothing about the distribution or sale of medical marijuana; effectively, approved patients may have marijuana, but the means of obtaining it remain illegal.
The state legislature has revised the law several times, most recently in 2011, but sections that detailed allowable methods of distribution and sale were line item vetoed by Governor Christine Gregoire. Gregoire cited the legal liability of enacting such laws in light of the federal government’s continued stance of prohibition. Marijuana remains a Schedule 1 banned drug under federal law.
Without state guidance, cities like Sumner, Bonney Lake and Buckley have maintained a holding pattern of temporary moratoriums to avoid the legal questions raised by a collective garden or dispensary within city limits.
Vinson did note that, on a long enough timeline, continued moratoriums could present their own legal liability if a court ruled that they constituted a de facto ban in conflict with state law.
He cited Seattle’s moratorium on new strip clubs, which ran from 1990 to 2007.
“The court ruled that was too long for it to be in existence,” he said.
However, Vinson noted that the length of Seattle’s ban was significantly longer than the total amount of time Sumner had instituted its nonconsecutive moratoriums. The city was therefore at a lower level of risk to re-up the moratorium.
Councilman Randy Hynek ultimately voted to pass the moratorium, but only after asking Vinson for concrete examples of cities that encountered legal liability for allowing dispensaries. Vinson noted two dispensary operators who had been brought up on charges that day for money laundering and illicit drug sales.
Hynek used his council comments to advocate for cancer patients’ approved use of medical cannabis (though he preferred the name hemp, stating “hemp has been with our country since the time of our founding fathers”) and hash oil.
“The only thing I want to say is there are many alternative health care options out there besides those that are provided by Big Pharma, and frankly hemp oil is one of them,” Hynek said. “There are studies that have been squashed by Big Pharma that show results in a 75 percent reduction of cancer spreading. No ill side effects. That’s an option, and I think people should have that option. Fortunately, you can go to Tacoma and they have that at their alternative health shops that sell cannabis.”
