High-school stoner looking to score weed or undercover agent?
High-school stoner looking to score weed or undercover agent? Lopolo/Shutterstock

As Heidi mentioned in Morning News, minors in Washington State seem about as likely to get away with buying legal weed as buying beer from a supermarket.

Yesterday, the Washington State Liquor Control Board announced that 19 of the state's 157 recreational marijuana stores had sold to underage, undercover buyers—an 87.9 percent compliance rate, which is roughly the same as the state's rate of underage alcohol sales. (Underage sales of illegal drugs, of course, have a zero percent compliance rate.)

LCB spokesperson Brian Smith says the agency sent "investigative aides" to each of the state's recreational weed shops to see if they could buy marijuana. (If you're between the ages of 17.5 and 19 and need a summer job, see these job listings. Working for the LCB pays $10.85 an hour—but if you're a decent writer, I bet you'd get a nice freelancer fee for your tell-all article about the experience.)

Brian Smith of the LCB says cutting down on sales to minors is critical for rolling back marijuana prohibition across the country. "Youth access is the number one interest of the federal government in whether states go forward," he said. "The compliance checks will continue whether there was a sale or not. We go back to stores that had sales sooner rather than later." Businesses that sell to minors are subject to either a 10-day suspension or $2,500 fine.

Most of the 19 stores cited declined to comment—or didn't respond to requests for comment—but a manager at American Mary in Wallingford, which has only been open for a few weeks, says the business is thinking about contesting the citation. "It happened during our soft opening," he said. (Because of the legal logistics involved at the moment, he preferred to remain anonymous.)

The manager claims that American Mary was "tripped up" by the LCB during the store's final inspection, when a state employee told staff that undercover aides were prohibited from lying about their ages if directly asked. (Which sounds like the old high-school druggie canard that an undercover cop can't lie about being undercover if directly asked. For the record: Yes, undercovers tell lies. It's their job.)

"We're going to go through legal avenues to fight this thing. It's an unfortunate situation for us as a business and for the employee, who could be faced with criminal charges."