SEATTLE — More than 100 hard-core tokers gathered under the Space Needle at the stroke of midnight to light one up in celebration of Washington state’s new marijuana law, which made it legal on Thursday for those 21 and older to possess an ounce or less of pot.
Voters in Washington and Colorado approved the nation’s first recreational marijuana laws in November. The Colorado law doesn’t take effect until January.
The Washington initiative allows for pot possession, but it’s still illegal to buy, sell or grow marijuana.
Although smoking publicly remains against the law, that didn’t stop the bandanna-clad crew puffing on pipes and joints under a chilly night sky early Thursday. And it appeared the Seattle Police Department was not in the mood to arrest anyone on a night most seemed to take as celebratory.
The department issued a bulletin to officers directing them “until further notice" to take no enforcement action, other than a verbal warning, against those violating the new law, known as Initiative 502.
“We had a city ordinance prior to this that said marijuana enforcement was our lowest enforcement priority," said police spokesman Jeff Kappel.
The state’s Liquor Control Board, tasked with setting up regulations to carry out the law, will draft a framework for licensing growers, handlers and retailers that initiative supporters hope will put black-market drug dealers out of business.
The state’s existing medical marijuana law remains unchanged.
“I think we have some ability to use our experience in regulating liquor, which is to me a similar public safety kind of product," the control board’s administrative director, Pat Kohler, said in an interview. “You want to ensure it doesn’t get in the hands of minors, and you want to make sure it doesn’t get in the wrong hands, where it can be used improperly."