By Aaron Burke

Patients, activists, lawmakers, and citizens around the country have worked hard to get people who need it and want it, legal access to marijuana. Somewhere between legislators, regulators, and healthcare professionals, every professional marijuana business has a great opportunity and responsibility to fill a big gap by:

Drug laws don’t affect everyone equally.

It’s good to be white.

For example, as a white guy, I’m statistically more likely to be selling drugs than an African-American man. (I’ve always been too scared of going to jail to actually sell pot, but I’m using this to make my point.) If I were black, however, it would be three times more likely that I’d be arrested for dealing. It gets even better for whitey. Though five times as many of us use drugs, African-Americans are sent to prison 10 times as often for the same crimes. And once ya get to jail? On average, African-Americans serve as much time in prisons for drug offenses (58 months) as white folks do for violent ones (62 months).

Marijuana and its legal status is a hot-button issue these days, with Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, the state of Washington and Washington D.C. recently legalizing non-medical use of marijuana. Medical marijuana, used for real medical afflictions like epilepsy, inflammatory diseases and neurodegenerative diseases, should be legal nationwide. You might think medical marijuana is just an excuse to sell legal weed and, for the most part, I agree. However, there exists true medical marijuana: cannabis oil from strains high in Cannabidiol (CBD), used to treat patients with epilepsy.

Retail sales of recreational marijuana continue to grow in Washington state, trending up about $3 million over April to May 20th, according to the latest report of activities from state regulators.

An earlier report here suggested there was a 30 percent reduction from April to May, but that turned out to be a misinterpretation of data issued by Washington State Liquor Control Board.

Customers purchased more than $35 million in 502 products in April, but receipts are just $22,582,100 in the May 20th report. 

When questioned about the drop, WSLCB spokesman Mikhail Carpenter said comparison of this newest data to prior months is not valid, because those are for the full month, while May’s numbers are only through the third week.

Big changes are coming to the state Liquor Control Board, including a name change.

The same law that will change the Liquor Control Board's name July 24 to the "Liquor and Cannabis Board" also directed the agency to decide which unlicensed medical-marijuana shops and grow operations to legitimize by July 1, 2016.

The process will involve a merit system, the Olympian reported.

The agency assumes 825 unlicensed medical shops will apply for a license and half will receive one.

Everything from antacids to frozen veggies has a label detailing nutritional values and active ingredients, but when it comes to cannabis that information has been sorely lacking. How does one know how much to ingest or inhale if potency information is lacking?

Sage Analytics has an answer. The company, one of 162 exhibitors at last week's Marijuana Business Conference and Expo in Chicago, wants to bring pharmaceutical-level testing to the cannabis industry with the Luminary Profiler, a black box that measures potency on-site within seconds. Marijuana leaves are sprinkled or extracts are dripped onto a lens that uses spectroscopy "to instantly measure the potency of cannabis products on the molecular level," the company's literature says.

OLYMPIA -- Almost everything you ever wanted to know about Washington's legal marijuana businesses might be found on a new state website.

The Washington State Liquor Control Board  has developed a new site that keeps track of the number of licensees for legal marijuana production, processing and sales, the amount produced this month or over the last fiscal year, plus sales volumes and tax receipts. Even the number of violations issued for not following state regs.

That's right. Plenty of pot info, with charts and graphs, and even Google maps with those little push-pin icons.

The Washington State Liquor Control Board (WSLCB) posted online a dashboard-style report that includes snapshots of frequently requested marijuana data. The report includes:

In the state’s first checkup on recreational-marijuana stores, four of 22 stores sold marijuana to underage buyers, according to the Liquor Control Board.

The state last week announced it would use 18- to 20-year-old buyers as part of a compliance-check program launching this month.

If asked for identification, the buyers were directed either to say they did not have ID or present a real state-issued identification. People must be 21 and older to legally buy marijuana.

Brian Smith, a spokesman for the Liquor Control Board (LCB), said the agency had spent the past year educating retailers on best practices to not sell to minors.

“We recognize this is a new industry. Any news of this will spike compliance — that’s how compliance checks work,” Smith said.

As marijuana businesses expand in Washington State, a bill being debated in Olympia could prompt the industry to grow even more.

Producers, processors and retail shop owners are closely watching HB 2136, which would rework some of the current regulations and change the tax structure. Some marijuana businesses say it's nearly impossible to make any money under the current tax structure.

"We've learned a lot since I-502 passed," says Rep. Reuven Carlyle (D-Seattle), the bill's primary sponsor. "This is an update, and a modernization of the current initiative."