Mr. Kamin.
Evidence of meeting #65 for Health in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cannabis.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #65 for Health in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cannabis.
A video is available from Parliament.
3:35 p.m.
Professor of Marijuana Law and Policy, University of Denver, As an Individual
I'll disagree on branding. I think that branding does help consumers. I think that, particularly in a new market where you're going to have new consumers, the idea that you can get the same thing you got before, and that you get a repeatable experience, cuts into overuse. It lets people get the experience that they're trying to get. You can go to different stores and compare on brands. I think it is important.
Colorado has an outdoor advertising ban, other than at a business's location. At its location, it can say whether it serves the recreational or medical market, and it can have its brand. It can't have anything else. It can't have flyers. It can't have prices. It can't have any of those things. If you have a liquor store and a marijuana store next to each other, one has neon signs, prices, and flashing lights. The other is very simple. I think that has worked quite well.
I think brands, yes; advertising, no.
3:35 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
This may be an inapt analogy for Americans, but in Canada we're moving towards plain packaging for tobacco. Whereas, in the liquor store, which is so heavily regulated, you have colours and the back of a wine bottle tells you something about the product. Is Colorado more like plain packaging for tobacco or is it more like how we would see spirits and wine?
3:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Colorado Department of Revenue
I would say it's much more like spirits and wine, where you have branding and imaging that is attractive to the specific product. Outside of the store, though, it's very much--
3:35 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
I mean the labelling on the product itself.
Mr. Garza, I saw you nodding. Was there something you wanted to say?
3:35 p.m.
Director, Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board
I was just going to say that it's very similar to the experience in Colorado. Typically, what we're most concerned about around branding or advertising is whether it's appealing to children or not, or to our youth. I would say it's closer to what's allowed in the spirits industry or the alcohol industry. I wouldn't suggest it be any different.
3:35 p.m.
Professor of Marijuana Law and Policy, University of Denver, As an Individual
I agree with all of that, with the exception of advertising. You can have branded products. They can't appeal to children and all those things. They can't sponsor sporting events. They can't advertise in the newspapers—
3:35 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Sorry, I meant “labelling”. I used “advertising”.
I have a quick question. When you legalized, what was your experience with supply? On day one, did you have enough supply? What happened?
3:35 p.m.
Professor of Marijuana Law and Policy, University of Denver, As an Individual
There was definitely rationing for the first while. We opened, I think, nine months before Washington State, so we were the first in the country. People came from all over. We probably didn't have enough, right away. Price was very high, right away. There was a big differential between recreational and medical, which led to issues. That definitely normalized within several months.
3:35 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
I'm just going to stop you because I want the last word to go to Ms. Sampson, if I could.
Ms. Sampson, do you have any last thoughts?
3:35 p.m.
Regional Coordinator, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
Do I have any last thoughts with regard to how Canada can take the lessons of our comrades in Colorado, Washington, and California? I completely understand the desire to, as we say in cannabis, “Go low and go slow.” It relates to consuming cannabis either in edible form or even smoking it.
Although cannabis has been around for thousands of years, in Canada and for much of the world, legalized cannabis is new. We understand the public health approach of wanting to take things slowly, but on that same note, if we can take a lesson from the state of Colorado, even though they did have some hiccups along the way, they did still implement. They did still go ahead with legalization, and it was through their experiences that they were able to tweak their existing regulated framework to what it is today, which is a booming industry that allows entrepreneurs to participate. It allows for a variety of products to consenting adults, and it brings in a huge tax revenue for the state, which I heard is going towards building schools and fixing infrastructure.
My last words to Canada with regard to looking at different jurisdictions are, “Just go for it.”
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
Okay. That's it. That's our time for the panel today.
I want to thank you all. We're very fortunate to have access to your expertise and your experience. We're very grateful. On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you all for bringing your expertise and your experience to us.
I had a question for Dr. Kamin.
You told a story about—I think it was—a South American person who came to the United States border and was denied access because she had smoked marijuana. If that was an American citizen returning to the United States, there's no penalty, no questions asked or anything.
3:40 p.m.
Professor of Marijuana Law and Policy, University of Denver, As an Individual
Yes. An American citizen has the right to return. However, as I said, we share a very long, common border. The enforcement priorities of our federal government change with the winds of our politics. It's hard to know exactly how that will work going forward.
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Garza, for participating.
Thank you all for participating.
We're going to suspend and return at four o'clock.
4 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
.We're reconvening meeting number 65 of the Standing Committee on Health to study Bill C-45.
This afternoon on our witness list we have, as an individual, Mr. Marco Vasquez, retired police chief from the Town of Erie, Colorado. Thank you very much. That's by video conference.
We also have Andrew Freedman, director of Freedman and Koski, a consulting firm that specializes in implementing marijuana legislation, and on behalf of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, we have Kevin Sabet, president. Washington State Department of Health has allowed us to have Kristi Weeks, government relations director, appearing by video conference from Hawaii.
The way we work is that each person has an opportunity to make a 10-minute introductory presentation and then we ask questions for three rounds. We'll start with Chief Vasquez. Perhaps you would start with your 10-minute presentation and give us an introduction. Again, this is from Colorado, and we thank you for doing this.
4 p.m.
Marco Vasquez Retired Police Chief, Town of Erie, Colorado Police Department, As an Individual
Thank you to the committee for the honour to speak today. My name is Marco Vasquez, and I'm a retired police chief in Colorado. My background is over 40 years in Colorado law enforcement, including 32 years with the Denver Police Department. During my time at the Denver Police Department, I spent about 12 years in narcotics enforcement. I retired from Denver in 2008, became the chief of the Sheridan Police Department on the southwest border of Denver, and then was recruited to become the first chief of investigations for the newly created medical marijuana enforcement division in 2011.
I helped set up the regulatory framework for commercial medical marijuana businesses in Colorado, and in 2013, I returned to municipal policing as the chief of police in Erie Police Department, which is about 25 miles north of Denver. When I went back into municipal policing in 2013, I also became the marijuana issues co-chair for the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police.
Over my past 40 years in law enforcement, my focus has always been on public safety and how to keep our communities safe. I have some experience in the Colorado marijuana legalization experience, having spent two years as the chief of investigations for the MMED and, as I've stated, as the chair for the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police.
In 2013, the CACP drafted a marijuana position paper, and I'd like to read a bit of that position paper, which was published on March 13, 2014:
Philosophy and Position:
The Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) recognizes that Amendment 20 and Amendment 64 of the Colorado Constitution were passed by voters in 2000 and 2012 respectively. The Colorado General Assembly has enacted legislation to legalize the cultivation, distribution, and possession and non-public consumption of small amounts of marijuana and recreational marijuana. In 2013, the Colorado General Assembly enacted legislation which legalized and regulated the commercial, retail cultivation and sale of small amounts of marijuana. The statutes which addressed the medical and recreational marijuana cultivation, sale and possession have been passed by the Colorado General Assembly and signed into law by the Governor. The CACP recognizes that society's views and norms are evolving on the use of marijuana yet we also believe that public safety is also of paramount concern to our residents, businesses and visitors.
It is the position of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police that our primary mission and focus of Colorado law enforcement officers represented by the CACP is the prevention and reduction of crime and disorder. Marijuana legalization will negatively impact traffic safety and safety in Colorado communities. The CACP is committed to research and the implementation of practices and strategies which will maintain safety in our communities.
It is recognized that Colorado peace officers have a duty and responsibility to uphold the Colorado Constitution and amendments to that constitution as well as local, state and federal laws.
The conflict between Federal law and State law with regard to marijuana remains a major obstacle and needs to be resolved as soon as possible.
The Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police is concerned that widespread marijuana use has the potential to adversely affect the safety, health and welfare of Colorado residents, businesses and visitors. There are concerns that marijuana use will adversely affect traffic safety on our highways and roadways and that marijuana legalization will result in an increase in marijuana and overall drug use in our schools.
The Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police supports the community education to reduce the use of marijuana by our youth and to highlight the risk of marijuana use to our communities and individuals.
That, again, was a partial reading of a position paper of March 2014. I have served on a number of working groups and committees, including the law enforcement subcommittee for the amendment 64 implementation task force as well as committees on data collection, edibles, and potency. I have talked to numerous stakeholders including business owners, law enforcement, regulators, policy-makers, and I believe I have a good handle on what has happened during Colorado's efforts to legalize marijuana.
I'm honoured to be here today with several experts on marijuana legalization. I am sharing this panel with people who know far more about marijuana legalization than I do, but I can speak to some of the impact and consequences on Colorado law enforcement.
I talk about a simple formula when I describe what is happening in Colorado. When you increase availability, decrease perception of risk, and increase the public acceptance of any commodity, you will see increased use. Once we see that increased use, it's very difficult to keep marijuana out of the hands of our youth. We know from validated studies that marijuana use for youth under 30 years old, especially chronic use, can have an adverse effect on brain development. We also know that one in six youth become addicted to marijuana.
We've certainly seen an increased use of marijuana in Colorado, and I believe that the increased use will ultimately increase disorder and risk factors for our youth. We're already seeing signs of increased disorder within our communities.
Because marijuana legalization in Colorado involves both commercial and non-commercial cultivation, distribution, and use, Colorado law enforcement has had a steep learning curve. Most of our issues have been with the non-commercial, unlicensed marijuana industry in gray and black markets. Andrew Freedman can speak to some of the things that Colorado has done to try to address the unregulated marijuana industry in Colorado.
Some of the issues that we have identified over the last several years that have impacted Colorado law enforcement include the lack of data collection systems to quantify the impact of marijuana legalization and the lack of clarity in the implementation of Colorado amendment 20 and Colorado amendment 64. Regulators and law enforcement still try to understand legislative intent, including the term “open and public”.
Edibles and concentrates were a surprise and have had an adverse impact on public health and safety. High concentrations of THC, in terms of vaping and shatter, are challenging what we know about cannabis. We've had a number of butane hash oil extraction explosions in Colorado.
Colorado remains high in substance abuse, and marijuana legalization has not decreased the use of opioids for pain management. Colorado has the distinction of being number two in the U.S. for opioid abuse.
Detection and prosecution of impaired drivers was and still is an issue. We have a five-nanogram permissive inference standard in Colorado, but marijuana is much different from alcohol, and we do not have the technology to determine THC impairment. There have been increased fatalities involving THC.
Caregiver and co-op cultivations in non-licensed settings have added to the diversion to youth and to out-of-state trafficking. Organized crime elements have moved into Colorado and grow large amounts of marijuana in rental homes and warehouses. Virtually all their marijuana is diverted out of state.
There has been an increase in disorder and crime in Denver in Colorado. We've seen an increase in homelessness, and many of the homeless tell us they are here because of marijuana legalization.
Finally, Colorado law enforcement has seen difficulty in pursuing some criminal charges for behaviour that is clearly illegal. In some jurisdictions we have seen what appears to be jury nullification, and we have found that municipal ordinances have been found to be more effective than state statutes.
A newspaper article just came out, I believe yesterday, in The Washington Post. It talked about chronic marijuana users being on the increase in the United States and said that the number of people who consume daily increased 19% in 2016. Daily users are up 50% from 2002. In Colorado in 2014 the Department of Revenue did a study and determined that 80% of the cannabis being consumed in Colorado is being consumed by 20% of the chronic users.
From a law enforcement and public health standpoint, then, I think that one of our greatest concerns is the chronic user and how that situation ultimately is going to affect us in our traffic safety and safety within our communities.
Thank you.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
Thank you very much.
Now we're going to go to Andrew Freedman, from Freedman and Koski. It's interesting that Mr. Freedman was a director of marijuana coordination for the state of Colorado from 2014 to 2017.
Mr. Freedman, you have 10 minutes.
4:10 p.m.
Andrew Freedman Director, Freedman and Koski Inc.
It's a pleasure to be here, and I have to say it's an incredible honour to be able to present to you, so thank you for the time.
I was indeed the director of marijuana coordination for the state of Colorado, which was a title that raised quite a few eyebrows when it first came out, and had people wondering what the job qualifications were. I can assure you that it had to do with nothing else but the fact that I was a lawyer and well versed in Colorado law, and that I was, at the time, the lieutenant governor's chief of staff.
In wondering about what would be most helpful for all of you today, in terms of lessons learned from our jurisdiction, I thought one of the more useful distinctions we have is between when it was a better policy objective to educate Coloradans, versus when we needed to rely on more stick-like law enforcement principles. For the most part I've tried to divide my presentation into those two subjects, and then some other pertinent information that I think would have been of use to us at the stage where you guys are.
First is to talk about youth use, and obviously education about youth use is important. I don't think anybody would think of it any differently. I will say that in Colorado we had a problem in tone at the beginning, and that certainly affected our rollout of public education campaigns and our ability to educate the youth early. We as government didn't see it as scare tactics, but the message in the first campaign was “Don't be a Lab Rat”. It was really about educating the kids about the fact that the initial studies coming out were not good, and asking them whether they wanted to be the brain that gives itself up to science later on.
What we missed when we did that was that when youth are listening to the government talking about marijuana, there is a healthy amount of skepticism coming from them. When you saw our further campaigns coming on, like “Protect What's Next”, we were working very hard not to use a condescending tone in any way, really just trying to meet the youth where their goals are in life. We said things much closer to, “Are you interested in getting your driver's licence?”, “Are you interested in getting a good grade on your tests, in getting a date to the dance, or in making a sports team?”, and “Do you actually think that marijuana will help you get there?”
Our post-tests have come back on that with a much higher rating, so there was a lesson learned on our side about how to do messaging in a way that best educates rather than reprimands youth.
I will also say that there is some very good research that we relied on heavily in Colorado, out of the state of Washington, about the use of behavioural health specialists in schools to identify at-risk kids who then get to volunteer in behavioural health programs. To date, that has been the best impact money that we've seen on the ability both to prevent youth use and also to pull kids back from substance abuse.
The other place worth mentioning is responsible use. I think you'll hear a lot about people showing up in hospitals and people calling poison control centres post-legalization. Most studies on that have shown that it's mostly about naive users—tourists being the number one naive users—coming in and trying new products.
The one that everybody is most familiar with, although it certainly isn't the only one, is edibles. Tourists come in, they don't have a place to smoke, and edibles are, frankly, a more consumer-friendly product. They buy some edibles and they over-consume just as they would over-consume alcohol, but it's probably a little worse with marijuana because there is a delayed effect there. They end up using more than they should—sometimes mixing it with things like alcohol—and they end up in the emergency room.
The good news is that the main effect is a short psychotic break, which doesn't sound like good news but it is. They're a danger to themselves and to others while they're in it, but there are no long-term health effects to that and all they really need is time to get through it.
The other thing to notice, and why I put it in this category, is that the more we have educated on that, the more we've seen those numbers come down. We've actually seen a decrease in hospitalization rates and a decrease in poison control centre calls since the education on what new products can do to users, and, in general, the education to naive users that there can be a pretty huge impact coming in on that.
The third one is licensee compliance.
One thing we've noticed in our system moving forward is that there are enough built-in incentives for licensees to want to comply with the law and that the more we educate them on how to comply with the law, the more we'll see compliance rates rise. That education ranges through everything from pesticides to youth use.
In general, at least in the way the Colorado system was built, you had far too much money at stake, so with that incentive to keep your licence, we ended up seeing very high compliance rates in some cases, much higher than the alcohol compliance rates for similarly situated licensee suspensions.
The areas in which to expect the worst have been talked about a couple of times. The biggest one is out-of-country and, in the case of Colorado, out-of-state diversion. Unfortunately, the way that legalization is going—in pockets, rather than in the United States across the country. Certainly, when you share a border with a state that has prohibition, the economic incentive to be able to grow and ship is very high, so you have to be able to look at your system in such a way that you understand where somebody's going to try to abuse that system.
In Colorado, that ended up to be in our home-grow system. As Chief Vasquez mentioned, it was mainly our medical marijuana that allowed for quite a bit of home-grow. Our recreational use also allowed for home-grow, and between the two, it was very confusing for law enforcement and there was a lot of jury nullification. We had to go back and clean up our laws quite a bit. It is also the area in which we've seen organized crime come into Colorado, and frankly in which we've seen violent crime come into Colorado.
The number one thing I say to jurisdictions when I come in, therefore, is to really take a look at your unlicensed system. Also take a look at your licensed system and make sure that in any place where there's abuse involving out-of-state or out-of-country diversion, you make sure to put up safeguards as soon as possible.
There are areas in which we don't know enough, and frankly, concerning which we're excited about the opportunity of seeing where Canada is going with this in order to learn more. Certainly there are trends we should be paying attention to.
Driving while high is one. There are two sets of data that we look at there. The first is actual arrest data on driving while high, which I would submit to you is very bad data and not worth looking at, at this point. That's because every state that has passed marijuana laws has then passed new “driving while high” laws and also used a portion of their money to train officers to be able to pull people over for driving while high.
The fatal accident reporting systems called FARS is a much better system to look into. It has not changed all that much post-legalization and is not susceptible to the same sort of objective biases that our DUID systems are. We can't link causation at this point, but these have shown an increased trend of people testing high while driving, and that includes for active THC. This means that among people involved in accidents in which somebody has died, drivers involved are testing higher for active THC at a greater percentage than they were before legalization. This certainly is a place that needs both a lot more research and frankly best practices, going forward, because it's not a place that has been developed at this point.
Adult consumption was mentioned before as well. We don't actually have great data from Colorado about how cannabis use disorder or functional impairment or heavy use has changed post-legalization. Frankly, if I could go back and rework the surveys of 10 years ago, I'd start to ask about frequency of use, but the main questions we've been asking are about year use and 30-day use. This, then, is one place in which I point out that you should have your data system set up to catch this information as quickly as possible, rather than five to 10 years down the road. We frankly don't even have a trend line in Colorado yet.
To speak very quickly to other pertinent issues, I know that taxation and where the revenue money will be will always be a big topic of discussion. I argue that the black market argument is probably not the key factor right now that should be argued about. Economies of scale have much more to do with the price of marijuana coming down over time than tax revenue has. Certainly you can tax it too high and can create a black market—we've seen that with cigarettes—so it should be something you are aware of.
In the opening years of legalization, however, the price of marijuana is going to be determined much more by economies of scale than by questions about tax revenue. Whatever you're thinking about, make sure that you remain flexible in your thinking, because the price is going to decrease rapidly over time as people realize these economies.
That being said, I don't think tax revenue should be a driving force behind legalization. In Colorado, any way you look at it, it makes up less than 1% of our total revenue, but in the voters' minds it makes up about 95%. It is thus in the media all the time, and it makes people think that it's enough money to fix schools or to fix transportation, and it's not.
I urge new jurisdictions to consider it going to discrete public health problems, such as homelessness, that don't typically receive revenue streams and on which you can significantly move the needle, because whatever you're giving marijuana money to, be prepared to have it get no more money down the line. Everybody thinks you can solve the problem with marijuana money.
I'll end with data, the ways we look at data and suggestions we would have going forward. We have five standards we think about when we think about data.
One is that you need to make sure you have great baseline data moving forward. We didn't have great baseline data for marijuana-related suspensions in schools. We just had drug-related suspensions. Marijuana might make up 50% to 60% of those, but it doesn't serve as well as a proxy. Having baseline data ahead of time, including on DUIDs, will be really important and will help you to signify public health and public safety concerns much faster.
Two, to the extent possible—and this is very difficult—it should be free of observation bias. I think one of the things that happens once you legalize is that everybody becomes very aware of marijuana, including doctors. They will say that they code more often for marijuana than they would have before, because they're asking questions more often. In the places where you can be more free of those observation biases going forward, again, the better data you'll have to be able to notice public health and public safety issues.
Three, you'll be pushed to gather information about whether legalization is a good idea or a bad idea. I think that's the wrong place to be looking for data. This is a country that's already decided where it wants to go. Instead, it should be picking up for public health and public safety data that is relevant to ways it can change and move forward with it.
Finally, four, make sure that it's actionable. I know a lot of places have great seed-to-sale data that they don't yet feel comfortable going to court with. Unless you feel comfortable enough with your data to use it in the ways you need to use it, ultimately, it is not useful. There are a lot of places you can go with data. I recommend making sure all your systems, especially your seed-to-sale tracking system, are talking to your public health and public safety data systems so that you can see your problems as quickly as possible.
With that, I look forward to your questions. Thank you for your time.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
Thank you very much.
I'm now going to go to our video conference guest, from the Washington State Department of Health, Kristi Weeks. She is the government relations director.
4:25 p.m.
Kristi Weeks Government Relations Director, Washington State Department of Health
Thank you so much. I apologize for the technical problems. I am on vacation in Hawaii, so I am not in with my normal support system.
I want to talk to you today about Washington State's experience and what we went through transitioning from an unregulated medical system to a regulated both recreational and medical system. Our medical system was first approved by voter initiative in 1998. It was a very simple initiative. It provided an affirmative defence to criminal prosecution for patients and their caregivers who possessed no more than a 60-day supply of marijuana. It didn't authorize commercial production or processing, sales or other transactions for consideration, regulation by any type of government entity whatsoever, the right to use marijuana, or legalization or arrest protection for patients and their caregivers.
Being from the Department of Health, I'm very interested in the role of the health care provider. We have medical doctors, osteopathic physicians, physician assistants, ARNPs, and naturopaths who can authorize the medical use of marijuana. They can discuss the risks and benefits, sign the patient's authorization form, testify in court, and they should educate about marijuana, but they cannot legally dispense or administer marijuana.
It stayed pretty quiet for many years after that, until our recreational initiative in 2012, and that of course allows adults aged 21 and older to purchase up to an ounce of marijuana and corresponding amounts of liquids and edible products that are obtained from a state-licensed system of private producers, processors, and retail stores. The hallmarks of the recreational market that were missing from the medical market were regulation and enforcement of any kind, seed-to-sale tracking, testing and labelling requirements, serving-size limits, product restrictions in terms of products that may be attractive to children, and any form of taxation.
When the recreational initiative passed in 2012, it did allot a certain amount of tax revenue to the Department of Health to create and maintain an education and public health program, to have a marijuana use hotline, to have grants and programs for local health departments, and to have media-based education campaigns that separately targeted both youth and adults. One of the issues we had with that is that it was funded out of tax revenue, but we were legalized in January of 2013 and sales didn't actually start until July 7, 2014. We had an 18-month lag during which we had legalization in Washington but we had no tax revenue coming in to fund the system.
One tip I would give to you or to any other government entity starting up a marijuana system is to make sure you have that educational funding up front and that you don't rely just on taxation dollars, because doing that is going to put you behind the eight ball. We had our citizens crying out for this kind of educational material, which we did not yet have the funding to put together. Since the sales revenue began, we now get about $7.5 million per year for our educational campaign, and we are in our third campaign. We first targeted parents about how to talk to their children. Then we targeted youth aged 16, 17, and 18. We're currently working on a campaign for our younger kids, aged 13, 14, and 15.
When sales started for the recreational system, we ended up with two systems living side by side—a highly regulated, highly taxed recreational market, and a completely unregulated, untaxed, kind of out-of-control medical market. Our legislature really started looking for a way to align these two systems.
That happened in 2015. They passed a bill that provided regulation of the medical use of marijuana through a single system of licensed producers, processors, and retail stores, with consistent labelling, testing, and product standards, and specific requirements for patients who are under the age of 18. We had never had that before in our initial medical system. There was no consideration for minors who might be patients; therefore, we had children who were literally going out and getting an authorization for medical use of marijuana without their parents even being aware of that, which raised a lot of concerns.
The goals of the alignment from the health department's point of view included clarifying what is meant by “the medical use of marijuana”. We have very strict standards in our law about what conditions you must have to qualify for the medical use of marijuana, but a lot of people use it to self-medicate. Is that medical or recreational? We also wanted tax breaks for patients who are signed up in our database or our registry. As well, we wanted to give them arrest protection for the first time, because, as I said, until that point they'd had only an affirmative defence at trial. We also wanted to better protect our medical patients by making sure that the products they were using were tested and accurately labelled, so that patients were actually getting what they were thinking they were getting when they went into our unlicensed medical dispensary.
On my slides, which I believe have been printed out, you can see some of the products—we have two pages of products—and the kinds of things that were in our unregulated medical market prior to 2015. They include products that mimic popular candy and treats, products that have 1,000 milligrams of THC in a single package. As you may have heard, a serving size is 10 milligrams, so that is a very high serving of marijuana. Also, it looks like a Twinkie. A small child may not understand that this is a marijuana-infused product.
I also have here a photograph that I took in a medical dispensary of completely unmarked and unlabelled edible products. I was in that dispensary. I held up a bag of Goldfish crackers that had been sprayed with marijuana concentrate and asked three different workers in that dispensary what was in the baggie, and they told me three different things. From a public health standpoint, that's very concerning. If you're a patient and you're relying on these products for your health, to go in and not be able to know what you're buying.... You're not going to have consistency and you're not going to have safety. You're not going to be able to rely on these products.
After the bill for alignment passed in 2015, the health department was given three notable tasks. There were several tasks in there, but there are three that I want to talk about. One is to create rules for products that would be beneficial for patient use. Another one is to create within the health department a new licensed profession called “medical marijuana consultant”, and one is to create a database, but most people refer to it as a registry. We were, up to that point, the only state that had legalized medical marijuana and did not have a registry. It was a pretty frustrating situation. I would get calls on a regular basis asking me how many patients we had in the state of Washington, and I would have absolutely no answer because we didn't have a way of tracking them.
For compliant products, when we were deciding what products are beneficial to patients, we really listened to our patient community and what they wanted from their system. They wanted better testing for pesticides, heavy metals, and mycotoxins, because those were not being tested for in the recreational market. As I spoke about earlier, we also wanted additional requirements for labelling, safe handling, and employee training. In my slides, which you have in front of you, I have a photograph of what a compliant product looks like. Something that has met all those requirements and rules can use a label developed by the health department to show the buyer that it does in fact meet those enhanced quality standards.
For the medical marijuana consultants, this was a compromise between our recreational initiative that said that people in the retail stores were not allowed to talk about the medical benefits of marijuana in any way. Compare that with what had been going on in our unlicensed dispensaries where workers in the dispensaries were basically practising medicine without a licence on a daily basis along the lines of, if you use this product, it will cure your cancer and you don't need to go back to your oncologist.
The legislature tried to create a balance between those two those things by creating a new profession that does have some training but is not a health care profession. At this time we have three training programs for consultants. Two of those are online so we can reach our rural populations. We received a little over 1,100 applications and issued 720 consultant certificates. These are people who can only work within a retail store and give advice about product selection but not medical care.
Our third major task was the database. It went live on July 1, 2016, which was the day of the alignment when all the unlicensed, basically illegal, medical dispensaries had to close. Initial and renewal cards for the database cost one dollar. It is not mandatory; however, it is voluntary, and if you're in the database, you get extra benefits as a patient in terms of not having to pay sales tax. You can grow more plants. You can purchase more products. It is entirely voluntary.
4:35 p.m.
Government Relations Director, Washington State Department of Health
To date we have issued 25,662 cards, of those a 100—
4:35 p.m.
Government Relations Director, Washington State Department of Health
Sir, I see you talking but I can't hear you.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
I just need you to wind up because we need to get to questions. We have one other presenter and then we need to get to questions.
Can you hear me?
I'm sorry you can't hear us but we have to go to one more presenter and then we have to go to questions.
I'm going to go to Mr. Sabet now. Mr. Kevin Sabet is president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. He's also the director of the drug policy institute of the University of Florida.
Mr. Sabet, you have 10 minutes.