Jack Scrantom
The Washington State Liquor and Hashish Board (LCB) voted and accredited the Social Fairness in Hashish rule proposal yesterday morning, October 11. The Board’s approval will add section “570” to Washington Annotated Code Chapter 314-55.
There was hope that the general public remark interval would yield some significant alterations to part 570, however the rule stays unchanged and that’s a disgrace. Part 570 will grow to be efficient November 12, 2022.
Part 570 is hardly making its method to turning into regulation with favorable winds and following seas. There are some remaining uncertainties about implementation of part 570 and doubts amongst stakeholders that will probably be executed effectively. In the course of the Board assembly this morning, the LCB stated that it expects to have the ability to settle for functions for part 570 licenses “in 2023”.
As a number of stakeholders on the Board assembly lamented, the absence of a concrete plan for rolling out the licensing regime after two years of engaged on the rule leaves a lot to be desired by the group hoping to benefit from the licenses. Additional, some stakeholder curiosity teams have had alternative phrases for the whole lot of part 570’s substantive provisions. That is all happening in an surroundings wherein sure stakeholders mistrust the Board relationship again to Washington’s I-502 grownup use enactment. Many stakeholders who had been taking part within the medical hashish area really feel that they’d been frolicked to dry by the enactment of I-502 and are involved in regards to the Board’s implementation of part 570 for related causes.
Outlook
As we wrote here a number of weeks in the past, there are some important points with Part 570 that may create heartburn down the highway. With out revisiting them intimately, probably the most problematic are:
- the restrictions on to whom and the place one can promote a piece 570 license
- anchoring the licenses to particular counties
- scoring standards that don’t seem to successfully worth probably the most disaffected candidates
- a extremely subjective software course of wherein third-party distributors act as software adjudicators
These elements of part 570 don’t seem to serve any official objective. Every is counterproductive to its mandate.
Given the obvious dissatisfaction of sure stakeholders with the Board, paired with the pre-existing points between them, it appears more and more seemingly that lawsuits difficult Part 570 can be filed as soon as the appliance course of is up and operating. We are going to monitor the developments of the Washington Social Fairness in Hashish rule turning into last and the LCB’s progress in rolling out the licensing plan right here. Keep tuned.
