Taking Pot Shots At Washington State

From what I can tell, SeaTac has basically turned into the fourth season of Weeds.

Two years ago, before Washington’s medical marijuana industry went completely nuts, Scott Havsy was without question Tacoma’s top pot doc.

He seemed like an outrageous radical at the time.

Unlike most mainstream doctors, Havsy had no qualms about authorizing marijuana for patients he believed were qualified under the state’s medical marijuana law.

He advertised widely, urging patients to come and get their “green cards.” By his own estimate, he wrote authorizations for 80 percent of the patients who asked for them.

Now though, with at least 150 marijuana retail outlets in Western Washington – more than 40 in Tacoma alone – demand for the cards has fueled a profitable and competitive industry: clinics that exist solely to churn out the authorizations and whose standards make Havsy’s seem quaint in comparison.

Because patient records are confidential, it’s impossible to know how many of the cards are bogus, but anecdotal evidence suggests authorizers have strayed from the legislative requirements that patients have “terminal or debilitating” conditions.

For instance, at last month’s Seattle Hemp Fest, two recently licensed naturopaths from 4Evergreen, a clinic with branches in Tacoma and Seattle, drew the attention of the state Department of Health for allegedly setting standards too low.

They did exams in a tent and issued authorizations for between $150 and $200 each.

A recent guide to medical marijuana resources in Washington listed 22 clinics and authorization businesses in the Seattle-Tacoma area.

And there's big money in medical pot for those willing to play a little fast and loose with the rules, looks like.  The Purgatory that is the patchwork of medicinal marijuana laws in this country really needs something of a unifying federal law to oversee it, but the odds of that happening are precisely zero until the big phama companies decide there's enough money in it in order to push for a national bill.  I still think that's the most likely way that we'll see legalization, but it's still going to be a long ways off.  Certainly we'd need a Congress not full of puritanical, hypocritical meatheads, and we've been awaiting that particular event for about 225 years now.

Like national same-sex marriage, I think legalization is coming.  The timeline is iffy, but the eventual direction is there.  Hell, at this point we're opening up casinos in downtown Cincinnati.  Eventually states will want their cut of vice money and push for a national law on this if only for the revenue.