Peace, Health and Safety at Stake!

“This act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety, or support of the state government and its existing public institutions, and takes effect immediately.” 

My goodness, whatever must be at stake necessitating such state-of-emergency-like wording of a bill before the Washington State Legislature? 

Have helmet-wearing protesters blockaded public buildings surrounding the capital? 

Will the public’s normal day-to-day rights and freedoms be immediately suspended in the interest of preserving some greater good? 

Are citizens to be detained, street-corner strip-searched and held without trial? 

The dire warning with which this article began – which is the threatening, shocking announcement that concludes House Bill 2322 – concerns this: 

“Cities, counties, and towns are prohibited from enacting any ordinance or other regulation pertaining to business licensing, zoning, or land use that has the effect of preventing or impeding the establishment of a recreational marijuana business.” 

The public peace is at risk should cities tell marijuana retailers to take a hike? 

Community health will take a hit if counties – concerned about marijuana’s “association with diseases of the liver, lungs, heart, and vasculature” – cannibalize Cannabis?  

Preserving safety (safety?) is why towns are preempted from preventing pot-pushers from profiting off their people? 

As if squawking from atop armored carriers rumbling simultaneously down the streets of our cities state-wide, turrets rotating just for effect, might as well be this additional and ominous attribution: ‘This is your Liquor Control Board (LCB) speaking.  You have been warned.  That is all.’ 

Back at you LCB: “After an initiative is passed by the voters and subsequently becomes an ordinance, the city can seek a declaratory judgment against the ordinance for ‘directly and substantially’ affecting the city's rights.” 

Thus ruled the Court of Appeals (last cited on page 29). 

So do you, LCB, want to settle this at high noon or on the field of play with a ridiculously large margin of victory in favor of the cities (not to mention the Seahawks who are included here in this context because of the new “‘Beast Mode’ powerful strain of pot named after the Seahawks running back”)? 

On the eve-eve-eve of the Big Game, the statistical significance of Seahawks fans being “46 percent more likely to drop their cell phone than fans of the Denver Broncos” escapes me but the audacity of the State Legislature feeding hemp to pigs and poultry, or the LCB dictating city policy through HB 2322 (Marshawn Lynch is number 24), is enough to make you want to throw your cell phone at your computer screen (12 percent of football fans surveyed do that) having retrieved it from having previously dropped it in your container of beer (13 percent). 

Go Seahawks.  And go LCB (as in please do).