Legislators pay visit to Williams
By Shaun Hall of the Daily Courier
WILLIAMS — Assigned the task of writing the rules for growing and selling newly legal- ized marijuana, state Rep. Carl Wilson told a large crowd Thurs- day night in the pot capital of Oregon he was “getting an education about your world.”
A crowd of about 150 people at the Williams Grange included the old and the young, those casually dressed and those in business suits. Wilson was there with two other lawmakers who sit on a committee to determine rules, as were growers with the Oregon SunGrown Growers’ Guild of Williams.
Wilson opposed the legaliza- tion of marijuana, approved last fall by voters as Measure 91. He then sought and was granted a seat on the legislative commit- tee charged with implementing the new law, which takes effect in July.
“After I was appointed, I got a whole bunch of new best friends,” he said. “This has been an enriching experience. I think it’s going to be an experience we’ll all remember for a long time to come.”
The guild has hired a lobbyist and an executive director. Its president, Cedar Grey, asked the audience at the meeting’s start to “unite for a moment of silence,” and he then insisted questions and comments be brief for the business at hand.
Guild lobbyist Jonathan Manton urged people to speak out in the months ahead.
“We’re building relationships,” Manton said. “We’re try- ing to do things the right way.
We’re going to need our voices tremendously over the next year.”
Commercial pot sales are not expected to start until late 2016, although Oregonians can legally possess up to a half pound of marijuana at home starting in July.
Visitors from Jackson, Lake and Douglas counties were on hand. Someone brought a toddler. Gray-haired men with pony tails were there. A couple of people in the audience sported dreadlocks. Nearly every chair on the second floor of the old wooden Grange building was taken. Tom Burns, the new head of marijuana programs for the Oregon Liquor Control Commis- sion, sat up front.
Wilson and fellow legislators Rep. Ann Lininger, D-Lake Oswego, and Rep. Ken Helm, D- Beaverton, earlier in the day toured medical marijuana grow sites and trimming operations in Williams.
“It was a great opportunity to learn about your world,” Wilson said. “It hasn’t been mine.”
Lininger grew up in the Rogue Valley. She supported the jobs that the new law could bring. Helm said, “The work of this committee is to make Measure 91 work.”
Wilson said “the most vexing issue” with the medical marijua- na program has been neighbor- to-neighbor conflict between growers and neighbors. He also didn’t want to tax the new sys- tem so as to drive consumers to the black market.
“We need some ideas from you guys,” he said. “We don’t have all of the answers.”
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Reach reporter Shaun Hall at 541-474-3813 or [email protected]
SHAUN HALL/Daily Courier
