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In a strongly worded letter to the Oregon Legislature, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission says medical marijuana threatens to destabilize the recreational weed market which state voters approved last November.
The OLCC's memo, delivered Wednesday, asks lawmakers to keep medical pot out of the recreational-weed system—keeping retail locations separate, and not allowing medically-grown buds to be sold at recreational shops.
OLCC Chair Rob Patridge tells lawmakers the likely leakage of pot from the medical system into the black market, and the failure to track that weed, threatens the "integrity" of a new recreational weed system.
"Medical production by growers for cardholders, and 'card-stacking' practices, produces an excess of product, not all of which is delivered to patients," Patridge writes. "There is debate about how much of the remainder of medical product is being shared with individuals and dispensaries, exported, lost, destroyed, wasted, or simply sold illegally."
As the legislature tackles rules for recreational weed, many have proposed eliminating a redundancy by combining the medical and recreational systems under the same regulators.
Patridge says no way. He writes that the state should keep the two systems separate—so that the recreational system won't draw the attention of the federal officials, who have warned leakage into the black market could lead to a crackdown.
"The commission recommendations reflect concern," Patridge writes, "that federal guideline compliance will be diminished if [Oregon Medical Marijuana Program] licensees or growers are allowed to produce or sell product through the recreational system."
Patridge says the OLCC would be willing to bring medical weed into its new program if growers agreed to have their buds tracked from seed to sale.
The OLCC's letter headlines a list of recommendations, first reported Tuesday by The Oregonian, on how regulators would like lawmakers to change Measure 91, the ballot measure that legalized recreational pot last November.
WWeek 2015