Shoreline Medical Marijuana Organizations Find Themselves in Legal Limbo

With a cannabis farmers market opening in Seattle last Sunday and stories of an exploding pot trade in California, Laura Healy’s small office in a strip mall on Aurora looks more like a space for a legal consultant or a real estate agent than one of the largest hubs for medical marijuana trade in the state.

But , which boasts more than 1,000 members from as far away as Richland, could be forced to shut down or leave Shoreline if Healy cannot prove it is operating legally. On Friday, the city served her with a business license revocation, giving Green Hope 14 days to file a $442.50 appeal or close shop.

The city issued the same notice to Mr Green Dreams MMJ, another Shoreline medical marijuana organization, and denied a license application from Green Star Collective, which has not yet opened.

To Healy, the notice came as a surprise. Green Hope, located in strip mall on Aurora Ave. N. owned by state Rep. Cindy Ryu and her husband Cody, has operated in Shoreline since November 2009 without major issue, and the city gave no indication that it was considering shutting the organization down, she said.

“I think the city council should come in and educate themselves,” Healy said. “They don’t even know what it looks like in here.”

City Clerk Scott Passey said the decision to issue notices came when the Washington State Cities Insurance Authority released a report in December recommending that cities take a closer look at medical marijuana dispensaries to see if they are in compliance with state law. He also said several local businesses complained about the legality of dispensaries.

But Healy says Green Hope, a nonprofit patient-to-patient network, is not a dispensary.

Under state law, dispensaries, or businesses that sell medical marijuana, are not legal. However, authorized patients are allowed to grow small numbers of plants and trade marijuana with one another.

At Green Hope, patients pay a $40 membership fee, and growers donate cultivated marijuana to a pool where members can trade their products. Additionally, members who don’t have the ability to grow their own plants can offer donations to cover the cost of growing.

Since the state provides no guidance on how to obtain legal marijuana, Healy said this keeps people from buying potentially contaminated or poor-quality marijuana from the black market.

“The state never gave us a safe place,” Healy said. “Unless the marijuana fairy comes, where do you get plants to grow? I’m not a provider. This is a place for members to meet.”

Patients must come to Green Hope equipped with valid documents from health care providers and official identification. Healy said the membership fee helps pay for the facility, and Green Hope hosts occasional fundraisers to help the organization stay open.

From the parking lot, the only signs of activity from Green Hope are the occasional patients filing out holding small paper bags containing their prescriptions. Healy said she has worked hard to make Green Hope a legitimate business and not to upset nearby business owners or the law-enforcement community.

In addition to seeds and smokable marijuana, members donate marijuana-laced foods such as banana bread, peanut butter and cakes. Members can also obtain tinctures, marijuana extract that patients apply from a small dropper.

Healy said members often share favorite recipes and help educate another on how to safely grow and use medical marijuana, which creates a sense of community among patients who might otherwise turn to drug dealers.

“We want them to come here where they can get clean marijuana,” Healy said. “A lot of stuff from the black market is laced with things like meth.”

The state’s ambiguous medical marijuana law has caused headaches among patients, medical providers and the law-enforcement community since voters passed Initiative 692 in 1998, which made medical marijuana legal under state law. The state tried to clarify the law in 2007, but much remains opaque and execution is inconsistent among localities and health care providers.

For example, the law gives doctors a court defense if they discuss with patients using medical marijuana for certain “debilitating conditions,” but doctors are not explicitly protected from legal ramifications if they offer prescriptions and thus rarely give advice on dosage, methods of ingestion or even where to find medical marijuana.

Medical marijuana remains illegal under federal law, meaning pharmacies cannot provide medical marijuana, insurance companies do not cover it, and future administrations could decide to step up enforcement and charge health care providers and patients.

Currently, the legislature is considering another clarification to the state’s law, which would expand the legal use of medical marijuana and allow licensed dispensaries to operate in the state. But that bill might not end up on the floor until June.

Passey, who issued the notices under advice of the city's legal staff, said for now Shoreline is trying to do its best to stay in compliance with state law.

“We will respond to whatever the state says,” Passey said. “We are really looking to the state to take the lead on this. We would rather not do this ourselves.”