Industry, tourism will benefit from legal marijuana lounges
By Mike McKenney
A staple of pediatrician’s offices everywhere, Highlights for Children magazine has an ongoing comic called Goofus and Gallant. Used to illustrate good behavior, Gallant does the right thing and Goofus … does not. With Washington and Colorado being the first two states to legalize cannabis, the Goofus and Gallant model perfectly illustrates the approach used by each state. Guess which character resembles Washington’s approach to legal cannabis. Here’s a hint — it isn’t Gallant.
As it stands right now in Washington, once you’ve bought your legal cannabis and paid tax on it, the only legal option is to go home to use it. This flies in the face of reality, and has led to massive illegal public consumption. It may be legal to buy it here, but when it comes to actually smoking it, you still have to hide behind a dumpster and keep a lookout, which certainly doesn’t feel like a legal activity.
Oh, Goofus, you’ve done it again.
Unlike alcohol, which can be consumed at just about every bar, restaurant, casino, sporting event and entertainment venue in the state, cannabis — despite legalization — is relegated to at-home use only.
On a similar note, let us not forget about marijuana tourism. This is the first year we’ve really seen cannabis-related tourism flourish. Restrictions on cannabis are even worse for tourists than in-state residents. Most hotels will not allow smoking, thereby guaranteeing the only option for tourists is illegal public consumption, which clearly sends a negative message.
States that legalize cannabis, but don’t allow places to safely and legally consume the product are negating the potential windfall from tourism for both business owners and the state’s tax revenue.
On July 1, 2015, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed House Bill 2136 into law. Most of the coverage of this bill focused on completely reforming the tax structure for cannabis sales. However, a last-minute addition was introduced, making unlicensed cannabis clubs a Class C felony. It was barely noticed and passed along with the rest of the bill.
My company, Zero, is Seattle’s first legal cannabis enthusiast club. We built a new and unique business that had never existed before. Our goal was to provide a legal, safe and fun environment for adults to enjoy cannabis in an atmosphere designed to remove the social stigma of cannabis use and normalize the perception of the average cannabis user.
In order to show that this business could be a legal, ethical and positive step for legalized cannabis, we knew we had to set the bar extremely high.
In the cannabis industry, there is an attitude that it is typically better to ask for forgiveness than permission. For example, cannabis delivery services, illegal in every sense of the word, flourished in Washington, with advertisements easily found in major newspapers.
We did not have that option. From day one, we followed the law and set up our business to ensure that everything we did was 100% legal, an approach that served us well. While I may not be the biggest fan of how Washington handles legal cannabis, I have nothing but praise for the way the city of Seattle has handled the situation.
Realizing cannabis clubs were an inevitable — and vital — part of legalization, the city of Seattle went out of its way to assist us once officials saw we were taking a legal and ethical approach. Every city agency we dealt with bent over backward to maintain communications and make sure we had the resources needed to conduct our business correctly. The city never approached us as a potential problem; it looked to us as a solution for the illegal public smoking in downtown Seattle.
At this point, you might be wondering, why not get a license if Washington’s new legislation only cracks down on unlicensed cannabis clubs? This leads to the latest Goofus moment for Washington. The language that would allow Washington to issue this type of license was stripped from the bill. The state of Washington has effectively created a Catch 22 for consumption businesses by requiring a license that does not exist.
My business would now be a Class C felony. We originally planned to open during the Fourth of July weekend, to celebrate America’s freedom and make a lot of money — two all-American values. However, by requiring us to have a license that does not exist, our only other option would be to knowingly break the law, which is unacceptable to us.
We are fighting this. Since this was signed into law, it now requires legislation to fix, and the wheels of government turn slowly. In the meantime, Zero will operate as designed with one small change — no on-site consumption will be allowed. We have to keep our doors open. While a cannabis club that doesn’t allow cannabis use sounds absurd, the state requiring a license that doesn’t exist is equally absurd.
As a taxpaying Washingtonian, I’d really like my state to stop being the example of how not to handle legal cannabis. Let another state play the role of Goofus, as I’d rather be Gallant.
Mike McKenney is CEO of Zero, a club for cannabis enthusiasts in the SODO district of Seattle (zeroseattle.com).