Legislative committees in Washington State this week gave initial hearings to a handful of marijuana-related bills, including proposals that would allow direct-to-consumer sales by licensed cannabis growers and finally end the state’s felony criminalization of home cultivation.
While lawmakers have not yet held votes on either of the two measures, they heard from from the bills’ sponsors and took testimony from supporters and opponents of the reforms.
Washington was one of the first two U.S. states to legalize adult-use marijuana, with voters approving Initiative 502 in 2012. Unlike most other jurisdictions to have adopted the reform since then, however, the state forbids home cultivation of cannabis for personal use—classifying it as a felony offense—and bars vertical integration within the commercial industry.
Legislative efforts to allow personal marijuana cultivation stretch back to at least 2015, but so far each has failed. Currently, only state-registered medical marijuana patients may legally cultivate the plant.
“I’ve been coming back to the legislature for nearly 10 years to to ask for the right to grow a few plants at home,” John Kingsbury, co-founder of the advocacy group Homegrow Washington, told members of the House Consumer Protection and Business Committee on Tuesday. “During that time, 21 other states plus Washington, D.C have allowed their citizens that right.”
HB 1449, from Rep. Shelley Kloba (D), would allow adults aged 21 and older to grow up to six cannabis plants at home for personal use, with households capped at 15 plants regardless of how many adults reside on the premises. People could also lawfully keep the marijuana produced by those plants despite the state’s existing one-ounce limit on possession.
Kloba has repeatedly sponsored cannabis homegrow legislation in recent years, but each time the proposal has fallen short. A similar effort last year died in committee without getting a vote.
Committee Chair Rep. Amy Walen (D) likened the proposal to home beer brewing or winemaking, which is already legal in Washington.
“I think that is a very good way to think about it,” Kloba replied, adding that those practices haven’t ruined the retail beer and wine industries or led to increased access to alcohol among minors.
Most public commenters who spoke at Tuesday’s hearing testified in favor of the change. The husband of a medical marijuana patient, for one, said he would “prefer not to get a Class C felony just because it’s my turn to take care of the vegetable garden.”
Licensed commercial producers and industry groups also came out in support. Micah Sherman, a farmer and board member of the Washington Sun and Craft Growers Association, said growers like the idea because “it produces an ecosystem of folks in the state that have an understanding of what we do for a living.”
Caitlein Ryan, executive director of The Cannabis Alliance, an industry trade group, asked lawmakers if they believed “growing a couple plants at home should be a Class C felony.”
“Every time I ask that question,” she said, “the answer is resoundingly no.”
Bailey Hirschburg, of the publication Cannabis Observer, said that as the legalization movement has spread across the country, Washington has emerged as an outlier.
The 2012 voter initiative legalizing marijuana “was the beginning of a renewed dialogue about better cannabis,” he said. “It was not meant to be a definitive answer.”
Vivian McPeak, the producer of the longtime cannabis festival Seattle Hempfest, pointed to a variety of reasons adults might want to grow their own, whether to ensure products are free from pesticides and heavy metals, to cultivate strains not readily available on the commercial market or simply for “the thrill of producing one’s own craft cannabis.”
Among those who spoke against the homegrow bill were law enforcement and drug treatment advocates.
“It’s no secret that our members weren’t, frankly, fans of Initiative 502,” said James McMahan, policy director for the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC). “And, candidly, many of the things that we were worried about with 502 have mostly come to fruition.”
Others, however—including the bill’s sponsor, Kloba—pointed out that youth cannabis use has remained flat or declined in the state since legalization took effect.
McMahan said WASPC would like to see a provision added requiring that home cultivation occurs in a secured location that youth can’t access but emphasized that, in general, “we just simply don’t think that this is good for public safety.”
Amy Brackenbury, a lobbyist representing the Washington State Public Health Association, said the group has concerns about youth access and also “social norms within the home,” suggesting that adults growing cannabis at home would increase the likelihood of youth use.
She also warned of “environmental concerns” around home cultivation.
“Equipment—like lights, ventilation, temperature controls—can overload home circuits and lead to fires,” Brackenbury said.
Kloba asked whether the public health association had similar concerns around medical marijuana patients growing their own cannabis at home.
“Yeah, I mean, we would share those concerns in that circumstance as well,” Brackenbury replied.
Among the more critical lawmakers of the homegrow proposal was Rep. Kristine Reeves (D), who opposed last year’s homegrow bill from Kloba.
Reeves raised concerns about how cultivation might affect insurance coverage and complained that while the bill’s proponents framed it as a justice-focused reform, it would still remain a felony for adults to grow more than 16 plants at a time.
Kloba, who at one point referred to herself as “the nice PTA lady who had done a lot of advocacy work” before being elected to office, emphasized that “this is not a bill that I would bring if I thought in any way that it increased the amount of access ability for youth under 21.”
“I have looked and looked, and I cannot find any studies that talk about a higher rate of youth access in states that have legalized homegrow,” she said. “It just isn’t there. And in fact…in states that have legalized, their rates of youth use stay flat or even decrease after legalization.”
“Passage of this bill would change some things,” the sponsor said of the measure, HB 1449, “but there are things that will still not change: It will still be illegal for people under 21 to have or utilize cannabis. It will still be illegal to grow cannabis commercially without a license. It will still be illegal to sell cannabis without a license.”
A day before the committee hearing of the homegrow bill, the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee considered a proposal to allow state-licensed marijuana producers to sell cannabis flower directly to consumers, without them having to go to a separate retail store.
Sherman, of the Washington Sun and Craft Growers Association, told the committee at the Monday hearing that he’s been working on the proposal since 2016 and has seen five different versions go before lawmakers. “We’re really glad to be talking about direct sales again in the Senate,” he said.
As introduced, the measure from Sen. Rebecca Saldaña (D) would allow licensed cannabis producers to sell their own marijuana flower directly to consumers. Products would need to be produced and processed at the licensee’s own location, and state cannabis regulators could set further rules and restrictions.
Sherman, who worked with Saldaña and legislative staff to draft the new bill, said a future amendment might limit growers to selling only up to 1,000 pounds of cannabis per year to consumers. That, he explained, is meant to limit the proposal’s impact on existing retailers and encourage craft growers to focus on premium products.
That amount, he said, “would be about one week’s worth of sales for one of the largest businesses in the state,” emphasizing that it’s unlikely to meaningfully detract from retail sales.
Unlike with the homegrow bill, licensed businesses in Washington remain divided on the direct-to-consumer proposal.
Ryan, of The Cannabis Alliance, said it “represents a thoughtful and necessary step towards ensuring the longevity and vitality of our state’s cannabis industry.” She likened the plan to how consumers can go to a vineyard and taste wines, then bring home a few bottles.
Brooke Davies, deputy director and lobbyist for the Washington CannaBusiness Association, said that trade group opposes the change. “We’ve got concerns that this would really just fundamentally change the market right now, which is not vertically integrated,” she said.
“We’re open to conversations about how we can help smaller farms,” Davies told lawmakers, “but at this time, our membership is opposed to direct sales.”
A handful of licensed growers also spoke in favor of the legislation, saying it would be a lifeline for smaller farmers in the state, many of whom are struggling to turn a profit.
“Hundreds and hundreds of producers have gone out of business and shuttered their doors in the last several years due to the unsustainability of the current market,” said Annette Pedigo, of Cedar Creek Cannabis. “Those of us who are still in business have been holding out for any kind of shift in the market that would help us become viable.”
Beau Whitney, an economist who focuses on cannabis-related issues, said that while his company, Whitney Economics, doesn’t take a position on legislation, the proposal “would theoretically increase participation by consumers” in the legal market, diminishing illicit sales, and could also “potentially create pricing stability” that could even benefit retailers.
Sales by producers would be taxed at the same 37 percent rate that applies to other consumer cannabis transactions.
One lawmaker on the panel, Sen. Derek Stanford (D), said he was concerned that the bill would create lower security and safety standards for producers than licensed retailers. Proponents, however, pointed out that the bill simply says that regulators could not make rules any more stringent than what applies to retail stores.
“I think everybody would be open to tightening up that language so that there’s clarity there,” said Ryan of The Cannabis Alliance.
Saldaña, the bill’s sponsor, was not present for much of Monday’s hearing on the proposal, but said toward the end of testimony that she looks forward to working with others, and taking amendments into consideration, to “see if we can move the bill forward this session.”
Neither the direct-to-consumer sales bill, SB 5403, nor the homegrow bill have yet been scheduled for committee votes.
Direct-to-consumer sales are already allowed in some jurisdictions, especially among small, so-called microbusinesses. And lawmakers in some states, like California and New York, have similarly moved to allow producers to sell to directly consumers.
Last month, for example, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed a bill into law to revive the state’s expired Cannabis Growers Showcase program, through which producers can sell products directly to consumers at farmers market-style events.
In California, however, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) last year vetoed a lawmaker-approved bill that would have allowed small growers to sell their products to consumers at state-organized farmers markets.
Meanwhile, as the new legislative session kicks off in Washington State, some lawmakers are renewing a push to legalize psilocybin services through a bill that would create a regulated psychedelics system aimed at promoting mental health and wellness.
The measure, SB 5201, led by Sen. Jesse Salomon (D) along with eight cosponsors, is a revised version of legislation he filed in 2023 that would have legalized psilocybin and psilocin—the two main psychoactive chemicals in psychedelic mushrooms—in a fashion similar to existing laws in Oregon and Colorado. It would allow adults 21 and older to legally use the substances with the support of a trained facilitator, with product manufacturers, service centers and testing labs licensed by the state.
Outside the legislature, organizers in Washington are separately working to put a measure on the state’s ballot that would legalize a number of plant- and fungi-based psychedelics for personal use, including psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline and DMT.
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