Meghan and Matt Walstatter often argue about who should cash in on legal weed in Oregon. The Walstatters run Pure Green Gardens, a Portland medical-marijuana grow with a dispensary in the Hollywood neighborhood. The couple wants to start growing and selling recreational dope when sales become legal next year. Matt thinks out-of-state investors should be allowed to come in and grab a share of the business. Meghan thinks they should be kept out…. “Right now,” she says, “there is this sweet little window in time where it can be from Oregon, for Oregon, by Oregon.”…. The debate over who gets to sell pot in Oregon is about to heat up—with millions of dollars at stake and well-funded lobbyists seeking to protect the edge outside investors now have.
Back in November, Oregon voters approved Measure 91, which will make marijuana legal as of July 1st this year. Like a lot of Oregonians, I voted “Yes”…because it was the right thing to do. Also like most Oregonians, I didn’t give a lot of thought to things like, oh, I don’t know…how about “What comes next??”
Granted, marijuana has been de facto legal in Oregon for years. Yeah, it’s still technically illegal, but you have to work pretty hard and/or be pretty stupid to get busted for possession here in the Beaver State. It hasn’t been a law enforcement priority, nor should it be. If it was, half the state’s residents would be behind bars jonesing for another hit and a bag of Doritos.
Turns out that the reality of legal marijuana is opening a Pandora’s box of unanticipated issues. We’re talking about starting an industry from scratch, and if you imagine wagons at the line of departure in Oklahoma before it was declared open for homesteading, you’ll have an idea of what’s about to happen.
How do you create an industry out of whole cloth when there hasn’t been an infrastructure to support and regulate it? How do we keep marijuana from becoming the 21st century version of the Wild West- every man for himself? Who regulates quality and pricing? Who gets to take part and reap the benefits of investing in Oregon’s new marijuana Paradise? Measure 91 contained no language regarding residency requirement, so now the Legislature is faced with the question of whether it should limit investment to Oregonians…or open the opportunity to anyone willing to open their checkbook.
Two other states that passed similar measures, Colorado and Washington, both set residency requirements for people to grow, sell or invest in dope.
That makes Oregon alluring for companies hoping to build multistate marijuana empires.
Local growers fear large, out-of-state weed companies could open factory farms and chain stores, pulling a Walmart by scaling their businesses so large that small growers can’t compete.
Some lawmakers are drafting legislation to put a four-year residency requirement on people entering Oregon’s legal marijuana business. (Washington’s is one year.)
“Why would we cater to outside influence and money trying to horn in on what Oregonians are already doing?” says Sen. Floyd Prozanski (D-Eugene).
The problem is that what Oregonians are currently doing is decidedly small scale. While medical marijuana has been legal for years in Oregon (and virtually anyone with any sort of boo-boo can get a medical marijuana card), the market is relatively small and the grow operations and infrastructure reflect that. Legalized marijuana will be a sea change, and growing weed, once a generally tolerated pursuit (though still subject to DEA intervention and raids), will become a much higher stakes game.
Measure 91 may have legalized marijuana in Oregon, but it didn’t set any ground rules. Between now and July 1st, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, an agency spectacularly ill-prepared for the onslaught just three and a half months away, will be trying to lay down some rudimentary rules. What will happen when the balloon goes up is anyone’s guess, but there’s a lot of money to be made, and a lot of people want in on the ground floor. Who gets to move in once the doors fly open will go a long way toward determining what the future of marijuana in Oregon will look like.
Right now, I don’t know anyone in state government has ANY idea as to what we might expect.
Stay tuned….
