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The sponsor of
the bill, Republican Senator Ann Rivers, said marijuana
certified as organically grown is likely to be on sale in
Washington in about a year and a half.
Washington is among a handful of U.S. states where voters
approved the sale of recreational marijuana. Washington was the
second state to begin legal recreational pot sales, in mid-2014,
after its voters in 2012 approved it.
"This is consumer-driven," Rivers told Reuters by phone on
Tuesday night. "As we have moved forward in the legal marijuana
market, we're hearing people say, 'We don't want any pesticides,
fungicides, none of that stuff in our weed.'"
The new law "creates a voluntary program for the certification
and regulation of organic marijuana products," to be
administered by the Washington agriculture department, according
to a state analysis of the new law.
Rivers said the "heavy lifting" in certifying marijuana has been
done by the system of doing the same for a multitude of food
products on supermarkets shelves across America. That process
just needs to be adapted for pot, she said.
Rivers said that legal recreational marijuana is "the gift that
keeps on giving....this year, we'll make $768 million" in
revenue for the state of Washington. This pays for drug
education and drug addiction treatment as well as public
education, she said.
Organic pot was just one of a myriad of marijuana-related
measures in the bill.
Many state legislators wanted to vote for only one
marijuana-related bill rather than have to go on the record
favoring marijuana several times, Rivers said. The November 2012
measure to allow recreational marijuana in Washington passed 56
percent to 44 percent.
While it is legal for adults to smoke marijuana in Washington,
it is not legal to grow industrial hemp. The new law allows for
the study of a method to allow hemp to be grown and used for
industrial purposes.
Last week, Vermont's legislature approved a bill to legalize
recreational use of marijuana. Unless the measure is vetoed,
Vermont would be the first state to legalize pot without a
public vote.
Voters have approved legal recreational marijuana use in
Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, California, Nevada, Maine,
Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
(Additional reporting by Tom James in Seattle; Editing by Nick
Macfie)
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