Washington’s Liquor and Cannabis Board’s Slow Data Reporting Leaves Status of State’s Marijuana Market Unknown
Reporting on Washington State’s legal marijuana market is slow-going, with data released by the Liquor and Cannabis Board being months behind other states.
Washington’s Liquor and Cannabis Board, which oversees the state’s legal marijuana industry, operates a neat and fairly comprehensive Marijuana Dashboard which has detailed statistical information regarding marijuana sales, licensing and production. The problem is that the Board seems be incredibly slow at collecting data, and/or reporting it.
The latest monthly sales data for Washington’s marijuana industry was released by the Board roughly two months ago. This was data for October, 2017. This means that data for November, 2017 and onward is unreported and completely unknown by anyone outside of the Board (or maybe it’s even unknown to them). By contrast, in Oregon and Colorado, states which have their Department of Revenues overseeing their marijuana markets, sales and tax data is reported through February of this year. This means that they’re four months ahead of Washington’s available data, and just one month behind current time (this makes March the only finished month where data isn’t yet available, though it will be soon).
Although data being released so slowly isn’t a life-changer for most people. even for those in the industry, it’s another sign that the Board may not be entirely fit to handle the job they’ve been tasked to do. Way back in 2015 we reported on how the Board was utterly confused about the state’s then-new medical marijuana law, and was giving bad advice to medical marijuana collectives that could have led to them receiving felony charges.
We reached out to the Liquor and Cannabis Board for their thoughts on this issue but they have yet to respond.
