Washington Still Without Weed Tracking System
Over a decade has passed since Washington voters approved adult-use cannabis on the ballot. However, the state legal market continues to work without a proper digital system in place, one that would track marijuana goods from production through processing and distribution to shops. Washington’s regulatory agency currently relies on a ‘stopgap’ solution that has serious limitations compared to software programs used in other legal states.
The Office of the Washington State Auditor has highlighted issues due to delayed digital “seed-to-sale” tracking system in a recent report.
Tracking systems are useful tools for legal state cannabis markets to follow and identify potential risks and issues concerning any illicit or unsafe practices. But the Evergreen State doesn’t have one.
An initiative to implement a tracking system for Washington’s legal cannabis market has been in the workings for several years now. Since 2018, the project has reportedly been overseen by three different sponsors and three different deputy directors, with no significant development in the last three years.
To oversee activities on the market, Washington’s regulatory agency, The Liquor and Cannabis Board, has turned to an outdated data backup system repurposed for tracking cannabis goods, which is far from perfect.
Following the recent audit, the agency said it’s fully committed to overseeing the cannabis sector, despite the obstacles with the existing software. A new cannabis tracking system will be installed in the next decade, or what would be nearly 20 years since legalization started in Washington in 2012.
Washington Tracking System Postponed Until 2031
The Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) has said that it does not expect to launch an upgraded tracking system for the cannabis sector until after 2030.
The Cannabis Central Reporting System now in place has significant limitations. For instance, enforcement officers cannot follow tracking information real-time on it. Same for licensees who cannot view their data in the system and check if everything was entered correctly. They have to ask for a copy from the LCB in order to make changes in the data.
Auditors also found the present system is prone to huge errors, such as misplaced decimals in the reported sales prices of individual goods. This fallacy caused the system to report annual sales of almost $8 billion in 2022, when the estimated sales figure received from the Department of Revenue for the same year was approximately $1.3 billion.
In addition, the audit revealed troubling records, such as almost 60,000 products with dates before active marijuana legalization, and another 600,000 reported dates that were from the future, Seattle Medium reported.
There are more than 600 cannabis dispensaries in Washington. It’s a decent-size market, with Seattle being among the top ten weed cities in the U.S. Implementing a more sophisticated “seed-to-sale” tracking system sooner rather than later in 2031, may certainly contribute to a better workflow on the Washington cannabis market.
Also read on Soft Secrets:
- Washington Job Applicants Who Use Pot Protected with New Law
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Stephen Andrews
