Washington is having trouble keeping track of all the pot it grows – the legal kind raised and harvested by licensed farms, turned into marketable items by licensed processors and sold in licensed retail marijuana stores. Those businesses may be growing and processing two to three times as much legal marijuana as is being bought in the licensed stores, a new study suggests.
So what happens to the rest? No one can say for sure.
The data-tracking system used by the agency that regulates those businesses, the Liquor and Cannabis Board, allows for "a high level of uncertainty" about the amount of extra marijuana and where it goes, according to a newly completed study by the Rand Corporation and reported last week to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee.
It's not the first time the marijuana data reported by the board has come under question. Last year, a consultant hired by the board called the data incomplete and unreliable, Susannah Pratt, a committee staff member, said. The board itself has recognized their data collection shortcomings and proposed getting legislative approval – and funding – to look for and implement a new system.
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