Oregon Cannabis: The Week that Was

Here we are a few years into legalization of recreational cannabis sales in Oregon, and it’s never a dull moment. Over the past week or so, there were three significant developments around the state with respect to marijuana law and policy. We summarize each below.

     1.     The OLCC hit “pause” on accepting license applications.

A few weeks back, we covered the dramatic Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) announcement that it would “pause acceptance of marijuana applications” effective June 15^th. The apparent goal was to ensure that our licensing paralegal, Meghan Saunders, would receive hundreds of urgent client emails and phone calls over a two-week period. And she definitely did.

The official explanation, of course, is that the agency was simply too far behind to perform adequate services for existing applicants and licensees. That is the explanation OLCC Executive Director Steve Marks gave in the May 30^th announcement, and it’s the explanation OLCC Policy Director Jesse Sweet gave at the seminar that he and I co-chaired on June 7^th. All in all, it seems like a reasonable explanation.

Fortunately, some of the pressure from the initial announcement was alleviated on June 8^th, when OLCC clarified that it would consider an application to be timely received for deadline purposes, even if it did not include an approved Land Use Compatibility Statement (LUCS). The pause ultimately took effect last Friday as promised, but not before dozens of our clients submitted last ditch applications (with and without LUCS) and made their way into the forward moving queue. In all, OLCC reports that an astonishing 1,001 additional applications were received in the two week period between its big announcement and the June 15^thdeadline.

If you are looking for more evidence that people are extremely interested in being involved in the Oregon marijuana industry, the OLCC reports that as of yesterday morning a grand total of 1,915 active licenses currently exist in the state (over half of them producers), with another 766 applicants assigned to investigators, 530 ready for assignment and 1,070 businesses in line but without an approved LUCS. There are also 30,018 active marijuana worker permits statewide, with another 17,217 approved and awaiting payment. Despite intense competition and price instability, people keep on coming.

     2.     Billy Williams went to court.

Last month, we wrote about the Williams Memo, a policy document authored by Oregon U.S. Attorney Billy Williams regarding his concerns about overproduction of marijuana in Oregon and black market activity. We observed that industry seemed unfazed by the memo, because it would be too costly, too politically hazardous, and ultimately, too late for U.S. Attorneys to attempt to shutter Oregon’s state-sanctioned cannabis programs.

Mr. Williams and others instead have begun working around the edges, drawing lines in the sand on policy and going after bad (black market) actors. Last week, Mr. Williams filed two federal criminal lawsuits concurrent with law enforcement raiding a licensed Corvallis retailer for allegedly selling pot across state lines, and running an illegal credit card scheme. The raid was led by DEA in concert with Corvallis police, and based upon information gathered by the FBI and the U.S. Postal Service. Those agencies, in turn, began their investigations back in December 2016.

For anyone thinking running a state licensed cannabis business is cover for committing state and federal crimes – including the export of marijuana beyond Oregon – hopefully last week’s news will serve as a wake-up call. And hopefully, Billy Williams and the feds continue to chase these people down.

     3.     Josephine County lost again.

Josephine County has had a rough go with cannabis, especially as of late. We covered its half-baked efforts to curb marijuana farming through restrictive zoning ordinances here, here, here and here, and examined the problematic dynamics in southern Oregon cannabis production more generally here and here. Last week, the Oregon Court of Appeals rejected the County’s appeal of a decision that it had failed to give land owners proper notice of the County’s proposal to ban cannabis farming on smaller, rural residential lots.

The decision being appealed was handed down by the Land Use Board of Appeals, a somewhat obscure Oregon court that rules on the validity of governmental land use decisions. In theory, the County could petition the Oregon Supreme Court for certiorari, and seek a reversal of last week’s Court of Appeals decision. But it seems unlikely that the Oregon Supreme Court would take the case, and less likely still that the County would win.

In that sense, the County is in the same position as with its seemingly desperate federal court lawsuit to quash all cannabis production entirely, and hearken back to the days of prohibition. We expect them to lose that one, too.