With a half dozen or more dispensaries operating in the Capitol Hill area alone, things are even more complicated for medical marijuana patients in central Seattle following Governor Christine Gregoire’s decision to veto most of a bill that would have put a legal framework around the dispensaries and the drug that many claim is a vital part of their lives.

A portion of Mayor Mike McGinn’s statement on the cut issued late Friday afternoon:

This bill would have provided us with a much needed comprehensive state framework regulating the production, processing, and distribution of medical marijuana. Today’s actions leave us with the same problems that we currently face: too many patients have to take unnecessary risks to obtain their medicine, confusion for law enforcement, a proliferation of dispensaries across Seattle, and an inability to regulate dispensaries properly.

The Stranger has posted a longer letter signed by McGinn, City Attorney Peter Holmes and City Council members Sally Clark, Nick Licata Mike O’Brien, Jean Godden that was sent by the group — absent some key residents of City Hall — to ask Gregoire not to make the cuts. It notes what it calls a proliferation in the dispensaries across the city:

We have a pressing need for the comprehensive regulatory framework this bill would provide. More than twelve years ago, the voters of Washington State approved Initiative 692 to make medical marijuana available to patients who have a legitimate need for it. But the initiative did not do enough to provide for safe access to medical marijuana. Too many patients have to take unnecessary risks to obtain their medicine. As a local government, we also deal firsthand with the other problems caused by a lack of clarity in the law: confusion for law enforcement, a proliferation of dispensaries across Seattle (more than 50 at last count), and an inability to regulate dispensaries properly.

These problems need to be addressed, and they require leadership at the state level. We have been working with other city and county officials to help provide safe access to medical marijuana, but we can only do so much. The current medical marijuana statute provides little guidance to law enforcement or to patients and doctors. It is in everyone’s interest — the state’s, local governments’, law enforcement’s, health care professionals’, and patients’ — to put in place a consistent, coherent, and rational regulatory system spelling out precisely how dispensaries and production facilities can operate. E2SSB 5073 does just this; it provides legitimate patients with medical marijuana while protecting the health and safety ofour communities. 

Existing state law allows patients to grow their own medical marijuana or designate someone else to grow it for them. Dispensaries run afoul of that interpretation of the law by providing the drug to multiple members of the co-ops. A city could decide to shut down that kind of activity but Seattle thus far hasn’t move against the dispensaries and given City Attorney Holmes’ position on the issue, it seems unlikely that will change any time soon:

However disappointed I am in the governor’s actions today, I will continue working with the Legislature and other state and local officials to do everything possible to bring patients, health care professionals, local governments, and law enforcement the rational regulatory framework and legal protections that has been lacking since the voters approved Initiative 692.