How much did the LCB just harm Washington Agriculture?

One week ago, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board made this year’s Easter weekend even more special for many of the cannabis growers that they regulate. Spring planting season had begun. Those licensees and their workers were thinking in terms of bounty the way that farmers do.

What the LCB did, early in the evening of April 6th in an almost “Happy New Year, Theravedic Buddhists” manner was to announce the presence of a putative DDx-positive geographic cluster nestled in an unincorporated area of the Okanogan valley, just north of Brewster, WA. I am using DDx to stand for DDT, two of it’s breakdown products (DDE and DDD) and some isomers of those that the WSDA Yakima Hop lab includes in their assessment panel. This cluster was identified by some of the staff of it’s recently reformed enforcement division (update 4/18 — it was “one of their chemists”).

I saw the agency announcement just before dinner that day and it both surprised and encouraged me. On the surface, it seemed a wonderful change in the agency’s enforcement approach to risks potentially faced by Consumers of Regulated Cannabis (CORCs) in Washington. It also seemed pretty “cool” to me that someone in enforcement would be able to discern the presence of a geographic cluster of environmental contamination using what I assumed to be WSDA-supplied COAs.

I was impressed enough by them having uncovered a cluster that I wrote a laudatory note to Chief Wax the next morning. In writing that note, I assumed that the LCB had actually detected an unambiguous cluster of toxic contamination. That assumption, I confess, was based on the gravity of making such an announcement. Any agency serving the people well would make damn sure, given the severity of the action they were about to take and the immediate strong negative impact they must have know that action would have on so many of the people in Brewster, that they were correct in acting. Particularly given the timing of their action (after the close of business and just hours before the start of the Easter Weekend — and during Passover and Ramadan, to boot).

I figured the agency knew something about the severity of the event that they had just not yet shared publicly. I assumed they were acutely active saving lives and protecting health. Good on them. It’s nice to recognize such work when it appears.

The LCB went on to inform the listening world and the AP that an administrative hold had been placed on a few of these businesses, each of which had samples with DDx testing at above the existing action level of 100 ppb. Each of these businesses was going to be asked nicely by the LCB to initiate statewide product recalls. Other farms in the area could expect administrative holds if their soils tested positive for DDx. Samples of products from ALL of the farms in the identified portion of the Okanogan River Basin were to be promptly and randomly (sic) seized from what were no-doubt random retail shelves by Agency enforcement personnel and tested for DDx by the WSDA hop lab in Yakima who, in themselves, were no doubt unaware that DDE was of special interest to the agency making the very urgent and unusual request to test a bunch of packaged retail products ASAP. At the same time and simultaneously and ideally yesterday, ALL of the licensees in the area were to supply the Agency with a list of all products distributed since last August.

This last demand was likely viewed as necessary by the LCB because the CCRS compliance reporting system they designed and built to replace their legacy seed-to-sale traceability capability is not able to provide insight to the degree necessary to trace product through the system. I’m frankly surprised that this self-imposed degradation in their information stores regarding the entirety of the industry is not causing more of an uproar. Again, the agency has some communications chops — I’ll give them that. They can almost make “We Enable Diversion” seem a phrase consistent with the agency mission.

The LCB announcement went on to list a number of planned future actions, but those are irrelevant for the purposes of this post. My goal in writing today is to provide an alternate perspective on what the LCB just did, what they have started, and where it might go.

Until I heard the heartfelt testimony regarding the LCB announcement during their Board meeting on Wednesday, I was focusing on how unjustified the impact on the Brewster 18 seemed — particularly when placed in relation to what the LCB had actually observed in the data. By yesterday, I was beginning to view recent actions by the LCB as not only a low blow to the Brewster 18, but also, potentially, to the wider state-wide agricultural industry that the LCB clearly neither appreciates nor understands.

Taken to it’s extreme, the direction in which the LCB appears to be heading will strongly bias GORCs (Growers of Regulated Cannabis) to grow in media other than soil.

The BIG thing, which the LCB seems to have neglected, is that, should these rules be applied with even a semblance of credible equity, the proposed LCB actions have the potential to shed negative light on the growers of ANY Washington crop directly or indirectly consumed by humans.

The LCB has effectively shed a surprising bright light on a topic that many in Washington prefer we take a watchful waiting approach with. It’s as if the agency has forgotten that the soil in which we grow our food and in which we grow much of the food eaten by the livestock that supply our dairy and/or meat and/or skin-based products is the same as the soil under the farms that grow cannabis. Often, these soils are hydrologically connected. Crops are often rotated across areas of land. Winds blow soils from one place to another. Things occasionally get spilled.

Highlighting a putative cluster of contaminated soil in one area of the state simply reminds us that hundreds, if not thousands of such areas criss-cross the state. Much of our food comes from the same areas and is, almost by definition, exposed to the same toxins.

Is it in the soil? Is it in the water? The answer is probably yes. What the LCB Board should now be focusing on is why staff suddenly think they are supposed to be managing agricultural pesticide utilization and food safety standards when those fall squarely within the domain of existing governmental institutions chock full of people who DO understand relevant details about the growing of plants in soil that may or may not be contaminated with pesticides.

In her original announcement of the toxic bloom discovered in Eastern Washington, the hyperaccumulation capabilities of cannabis were emphasized by Chief Wax. No doubt anticipating questions as to whether this might also impact apples, milk, wheat, potatoes, beef, hay, cherries, pears, grapes, hops, blueberries, asparagus, etc., as well as anything grown in certain urban, industrial, or environmental hotspots (such as near legacy highways that were in operation back in the days of leaded gasoline), the announcement emphasized that it was a UNIQUE (Chief Wax’s words, not mine) property of cannabis to suck up bad things (my words, not hers) from the soil that made this DDE-inspired “incident” worth the destruction of a handful of hick country businesses that aren’t even really farms per state law, in order to preserve the health and safety of our society and the public that comprise it.

I do not know if cannabis is differentially adept at sucking up DDx. What I KNOW cannabis to be very good at accumulating is a number of heavy metals. Given the presence of the Hanford reserve in our state, the fact that cannabis has been shown to be a fantastic remediator of plutonium-contaminated land is something that the LCB should take note of. Same with the lead and arsenic known to reside just below the surface of so much of Washington’s soils, thanks to heavy use of lead arsenide back in the day. I wonder if cannabis is particularly adept at sucking up PFAs or PCBs? Dioxin? Might be nice to know. Does the WSDA know if carrots or potatoes suck those things up?

It would be nice if the nascent Washington Hemp industry were to be able to find an opportunity emerge from this action. Perhaps they may be able to use their crops to remediate the toxic soil currently being used by apple farmers and other farmers throughout the state. Washington’s Hemp farmers would most certainly be able to use the boost if Governor Inslee signs off on E2SSB-5367 (a misguided bill put forward by the LCB that re-defines THC and expands the LCB’s authority even further). If signed into law, E2SSB-5367 would immediately cause severe damage to those that are trying to turn hemp into another successful Washington commodity. Our own WSDA estimates that the majority of existing hemp farms in the state would close if this bill becomes law. I thought the Governor knew farmers and farming. He should not sign this bill.

By yesterday, I was wondering how much damage the LCB action has already done to Washington’s agricultural industry. From what I saw this afternoon, the damage is not only not trivial, it is going to get worse.

If only the LCB knew their pesticide data well. If only they knew their MARKET data well. If only they understood toxicology reports. If only.

It really is unfortunate that the agency has so consistently seemed to care so little over the past 8 years about how the industry they regulate is frequently selling tainted and/or fraudulently labelled product to CORCs. I don’t like what they did to Brewster and I don’t like what they may have done to the broader agricultural sector in Washington. I also don’t like what they have been doing for years to the more than 1.7 million Washingtonians that have consumed WA-grown regulated cannabis.

Upon reflection, I like WA-grown apples and I’m going to continue eating one every once in awhile.

For now, I’m going to do what the Board overseeing the WSLCB did in delaying action on the emergency rule-making petition presented to them by staff on Wednesday regarding these pesticide detections. I’m going to pause writing on Brewstercide for the moment.

It is probably best to let the agency chew around a bit with Agriculture and Ecology and Health on how many billions of dollars of the non-cannabis Washington agriculture economy they just put at risk through a mind-numbingly stupid anti-cannabis process that their misplaced desire to save consumers created. Sometimes I want to remind them that much alcohol is just processed plants. We will all no doubt see how the Governor’s people attempt to mitigate that risk. I think their direction began to emerge during the meetings held with the affected farms, the labs that serve the cannabis industry, and state legislators earlier today. Thank goodness such meetings are recorded in this day and age.

I plan to give this a bit of time to unfold and, hopefully, course-correct. My fear is that the LCB will dig in it’s heels and proceed with even more vigor (and caution and care and — above all else — collaboration with “all of the Governor’s people” ) as they strive to minimize the appearance that what they did was anything other than the best thing they could do to balance the complexities of this very dynamic and changing market while they are busy trying to develop future job opportunities with and through CANNRA.

In future posts I will address some of the “little white lies” I am beginning to hear from Agency officials regarding the history of their dealings with pesticides and detections above defined action levels. These “lies” may be based on ignorance and not an intent to deceive, as I get the impression that at least some of them are trying to do the right thing here. Ignorance is their biggest enemy at the moment. Bias against cannabis that still infests parts of their agency is the next.

A friendly piece of advice to the Agency: The correct thing to do right now is to admit your mistake, take a step back, and figure out what you should do GOING FORWARD rather than beginning a process that will inevitably lead to a potentially disastrous cycle of questions such as “Why aren’t you testing for lead at grows near highways?”, ” Why is pesticide X not as much of a worry as is DDE?”, “Are our farms killing our salmon”, “Is it true that the hemp-derived products imported from China often come from hemp used to remediate toxic soil in that country? Does that impact WA-grown hemp?”, “When are you going to start require testing for heavy metals in cannabis?”, “Did DDE kill my baby?”, etc.

It would also, in the future, be a very good idea to at least get to know an area or community well before you ever again decide to flex your ever-expanding authority and callously destroy it.

Enjoy a Washington-grown apple this weekend. Just don’t have too many of them — at least not until the soil and water tests taken by the LCB come back. Right now, it looks like their toxicology model suggests many thousands of deaths may emerge from eating apples with 0.1 ppm DDE.