The Stranger, 12 Jun 2013 – Meet the Broker Who Built the Cannabis Insurance Pool Legal-pot sellers, like all smart business owners, will need insurance when they open their doors. If someone slips and falls in a cannabis store, gets sick from ganja food, or steals all the weed, the cost to a pot business could be colossal. Not only that, anyone hoping to lease commercial property will almost certainly be required to provide proof of general liability insurance. And if those aren’t compelling enough reasons, draft rules issued by the Washington State Liquor Control Board last month require every licensee to carry such coverage.

The Stranger, 05 Jun 2013 – Landlords May Have to Incriminate Themselves Any entrepreneur who wants to open a pot business in Washington State will start with a fairly straightforward application process: submit fingerprints, disclose criminal history, share an operating plan that names financial backers, and promise that taxes are paid up. But then the draft rules issued by the Washington State Liquor Control Board last month list this unusual requirement: "a signed affidavit from the landlord acknowledging the leased premises will be used as a marijuana business."

The Stranger, 29 May 2013 – Liquor Board May Ban Out-of-State Investors Most cannabis-related investment advice I’ve seen seems to distill down to this: Avoid companies that actually sell pot and instead invest in "ancillary" businesses-such as the hash-oil-machine maker, pot-selling software, and web-based weed advertising services. The typical reasoning for this reservation is the big federal question mark, the uncertainty about whether the Feds might start forfeiture proceedings against legal pot investments.

The Stranger, 22 May 2013 – Draft Pot Rules Would Encourage Black Market for Cannabis Concentrates Last week, the Washington State Liquor Control Board released draft regulations for the legal cannabis market enacted by voters. The 46-page document specifies the qualification process for potential pot entrepreneurs-including fingerprints that will be sent to the FBI-requirements for growing and selling marijuana, and many rules about license objections, violations, and suspensions. Potential licensees will have a one-month window to apply, and if more retailers apply than the liquor board intends to license, they will conduct a pot-store lottery.

The Stranger, 15 May 2013 – Medical Pot Purveyors Protest Amendment They Claim Could Put Them Out of Business The state legislature enters a special session this week to finish the work of passing a budget bill. But this year, the nuts-and-bolts legislation has become a flash point for medical marijuana activists, some of whom oppose a budget rider that would regulate medical cannabis through the state liquor board-the same agency already tasked with overseeing the legal recreational pot market created by I-502.

The Stranger, 08 May 2013 – It’s Historic, but a Nonissue Thanks to Legalization When Seattle cops cracked down on May Day protests last week, they formed phalanxes and blasted the crowd with pepper spray. But when demonstrators arrive downtown this Saturday-for a protest with its own civil disobedience-the city’s top cop won’t be an adversary. He’ll be the keynote speaker.

The Stranger, 27 Mar 2013 – State and Federal Law May Require Poison-Free Pot State regulators want to know what sort of chemicals marijuana growers apply to their crops. Scheduled to issue growing licenses in mid-August-less than five months away-the Washington State Liquor Control Board has reached out to industry professionals for real-world advice on what biocides local growers dust on their dope. In an e-mail sent last Friday, comptroller Mike Steenhout asked recipients to "provide a list of all pesticides or any other compounds that you would ever apply to a marijuana plant."

The Stranger, 20 Mar 2013 – Don’t Call Them "Okies," Call Them "Tokies" Some cannabis believers are so devout that they’re packing for a pilgrimage to one of two new legal-pot meccas: Colorado and Washington States. Similar to (though better-heeled than) the dust-bowl desperates of the 1930s, these legal-pot Okies-marijuana Tokies-long to eke out new lives in the land of legal cannabis, the land of their dreams.