SEATTLE – In one corner of Washington state, a 62-year-old rheumatoid arthritis patient could face more than eight years in prison for growing marijuana for himself and three others. In Seattle, meanwhile, a collection of grow operations serves 2,000 people with little interference from police.
The discrepancy is typical of the confusion that has reigned since voters passed Washington’s medical marijuana law more than a decade ago. Nor have things improved much since the state clarified how much pot patients can have last year.
Unlike some states, Washington requires patients to grow marijuana themselves or designate a caregiver to grow it for them. For many, that’s unrealistic: They’re too sick to grow cannabis themselves and don’t have the thousands of dollars it can cost for a caregiver to set up a proper growing operation.
So they’ve devised their own schemes, claiming to meet the letter of the law in establishing collective grows or storefront dispensaries, methods that are making police and prosecutors increasingly uncomfortable.
“The spirit of the law would recognize the necessity of having small cooperative ventures,” said Dan Satterberg, the prosecutor in King County, where Seattle is. “But if they get past a certain size, become a magnet for neighborhood violence, or you get other people showing up to buy marijuana who are not permitted to under the law, then there’s tension.”
Three years ago, Satterberg’s office declined to prosecute a man who was growing 130 plants for 40 people. But a case this year may be testing his tolerance: He hasn’t decided whether to charge a hepatitis patient caught with 200 plants, which he claimed supplied more than 100 other patients.
Some activists and the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington recently began discussions with Seattle police over whether to limit the size of cooperative grows.
In Spokane this month, police shut down a medical marijuana dispensary, the first such bust in the state, and arrested the two owners. They warned a half-dozen other dispensaries to close as well, and the raid quickly drew protests from patients. The raid has set up a high-profile court fight.