Watching the state birth an entire bureaucracy for dealing with
legalized marijuana has been a little like watching a late-season
Mariners game — you know it’s going to be a meaningless comedy of
errors. There’s no chance of making the playoffs, because the game is
being played primarily with rookies and guys who started the season in
the minors, along with a few end-of-their-career veterans.
I recently attended a meeting, where the speaker was Clallam County
District Court Judge Rick Porter, discussing the state’s impending (it’s
not yet legal) legalization, proposed enforcement, taxation, and
marketing of reefer. The judge was a pretty entertaining speaker, and
made a lot of his more serious points using humor.
However, the one point he made that really isn’t too funny when you
think about it, yet elicited the biggest chuckle from the audience
because no one was at all surprised, was this: By the time the state
taxes pot at the grower level, the processor lever, and again at the retail
level, the cost will be just about twice the current illegal street price.
This was supposed to be a gold mine for the state, and it’s spending
millions of our tax dollars creating the bureaucracy to oversee it. Personally, I believe
those supposed business geniuses down there in Olympia could figure out how to lose money selling
whiskey in a whorehouse.
