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| In this photo taken Tuesday, July 1, 2014, Stevie Askew, a worker at Sea of Green Farms, packs recreational marijuana into blunts that will be sold in stores when legal recreational pot sales begin Tuesday, July 8, in Washington state. The grower, the first business licensed to grow recreational marijuana in Washington state, worked all weekend to have supplies ready for stores that were expected to be granted sale licenses on Monday. |
SEATTLE (AP)
-- Washington state issued its first retail marijuana licenses Monday
with a middle-of-the-night email alerting bleary-eyed pot-shop
proprietors that they'll finally be able to open for business.
"We're
pretty stoked," said John Evich, an investor in Bellingham's Top Shelf
Cannabis, in a 2:30 a.m. Pacific time interview with The Associated
Press. "We haven't had any sleep in a long time, but we're excited for
the next step."
Randy Simmons, the state
Liquor Control Board's project manager for legal marijuana, said Sunday
night that the first two dozen stores were being notified so early to
give them an extra few hours to get cannabis on their shelves before
they are allowed to open their doors at 8 a.m. Tuesday. The store
openings are expected to be accompanied by high prices, shortages and
celebration.
The state licensed 14 stores in western Washington and 10 in eastern Washington.
Spokane
has three stores. Vancouver, Tacoma and Bellingham each have two.
Seattle and the other cities on the list have one each.
The
issuance of the retail licenses marked a major step that's been 20
months in the making. Washington and Colorado stunned much of the world
by voting in November 2012 to legalize marijuana for adults over 21, and
to create state-licensed systems for growing, selling and taxing the
pot.
Sales began in Colorado on Jan. 1.
It
remained unclear how many of the pot-shops being licensed in Washington
planned to open on Tuesday. Officials eventually expect to have more
than 300 recreational pot shops across the state.
At
Cannabis City, which will be the first and, for now, only recreational
marijuana shop in Seattle, owner James Lathrop worked into the night
Sunday placing no-parking signs in front of his building, hoisting a
grand-opening banner and hanging artwork before he turned his attention
to his email - and the official notification that he was a licensed
marijuana dealer.
"I've had a long day. It really hasn't sunk in yet," he said early Monday.
He planned to hold off on opening his store until noon on Tuesday.
"Know your audience: We're talking stoners here," he said. "I'd be mean to say they need to get up at 5 a.m. to get in line."
With
the emailed notifications in hand, the shops immediately worked to
place their orders with some of the state's first licensed growers. As
soon as the orders were received, via state-approved software for
tracking the bar-coded pot, the growers could place the product in a
required 24-hour "quarantine" before shipping it early Tuesday morning.
The
final days before sales have been frenetic for growers and retailers
alike. Lathrop and his team hired an events company to provide crowd
control, arranged for a food truck and free water for those who might
spend hours waiting outside, and rented a portable toilet to keep his
customers from burdening nearby businesses with requests to use the
restrooms.
At Nine Point Growth Industries, a
marijuana grower in Bremerton, owner Gregory Stewart said he and his
director celebrated after they worked through some glitches in the
pot-tracking software early Monday and officially learned they'd be able
to transport their weed 24 hours later, at 2:22 a.m. Tuesday.
"It's
the middle of the night and we're standing here doing high-fives and
our version of a happy dance," he said. "It's huge for us."
Pot
prices were expected to reach $25 a gram or higher on the first day of
sales - twice what people pay in the state's unregulated medical
marijuana dispensaries. That was largely due to the short supply of
legally produced pot in the state. Although more than 2,600 people
applied to become licensed growers, fewer than 100 have been approved -
and only about a dozen were ready to harvest by early this month.
Nevertheless,
Evich said his shop in Bellingham wanted to thank the state's residents
for voting for the law by offering $10 grams of one cannabis strain to
the first 50 or 100 customers. The other strains would be priced between
$12 and $25, he said.
The store will be open
at 8 a.m. Tuesday, he said, but work remained: trimming the bathroom
door, cleaning the floors, wiping dust off the walls and, of course,
stocking the shelves.
In Seattle, among those
who planned to buy some of the first pot at Cannabis City was Alison
Holcomb, the lawyer who drafted Washington's law. She said it was a good
opportunity to remind people of the big-picture arguments for ending
nearly a century of prohibition and displacing the black market,
including keeping nonviolent, adult marijuana users out of jail;
redirecting profits away from criminal groups; and ending racial
disparities in who gets busted.
"No one
thought legalization could happen in our lifetime," she said. "I think
this is going to be a little overwhelming for me."
