On March 2, during a late-night vote in Olympia, state senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles rose to offer a last-minute amendment to her own bill.
She was doing the bidding of senate Republicans, she admitted later. A number of conservative lawmakers were willing to vote for Kohl-Welles’s overall measure, which seeks to clarify state laws on medical marijuana and allow dispensaries, but only if she would ban advertisements for medical marijuana in newspapers and magazines.
Why did Republicans want a ban on ads—like the ads appearing regularly in this paper and others—that provide information about legal medical marijuana providers? Republican state senator Michael Baumgartner of Spokane told the senate chamber: “I think it’s quite clear that they’re promoting or have a risk of promoting to children… Let’s not lure kids into this sort of a behavior or lifestyle.”
Wanting above all to get the bill through the senate, Kohl-Welles agreed. “We certainly do not need to have advertisements, whether they be in any form, that would be considered to promote the use of cannabis to anybody,” she told the chamber.
Her amendment passed, and soon afterward her bill cleared the senate, 29 to 20, with Baumgartner and eight other Republicans among the “yea” votes and seven Democrats among those voting “nay.” In other words, Kohl-Welles needed those Republican votes. Her bill would have failed without them. But adding this amendment has brought confusion—and charges of unconstitutionality—to a bill that was designed to do the opposite: add clarity to Washington State’s laws on medical pot.
Stewart Jay, a University of Washington law professor and an expert on constitutional law, called the ad ban “alarming,” vague, and a violation of the First Amendment. It would prohibit ads featuring “artistic depictions of cannabis” as well as any ad that “promotes or tends to promote the use or abuse of cannabis.” Whatever that means. A fine of $1,000 would be levied against producers or distributors who take out such ads, and media that run offending ads face unspecified sanctions. “I can’t imagine a court upholding it,” Jay said in an e-mail. “I hope that the effort to legalize marijuana is not derailed over concerns for its advertising.”
The ACLU of Washington, which is strongly backing Kohl-Welles’s overall bill and is normally a proponent of free speech, has given mixed signals about the ad-ban amendment and recently stopped responding to Stranger requests for comment on the issue. Meanwhile, Kohl-Welles told The Stranger that before she proposed her ad-ban amendment, the ACLU told her the amendment was constitutional.
Kohl-Welles, and many others, will be keeping an eye on the ad-ban language as the state house Health Care and Wellness Committee takes up the medical pot bill this month. 
Cannabis is legal to me!Fuck the Republicans,Demolicans,and anybody else who thinks otherwise!
It’s surprising to see that in choosing your quotes from Prof. Jay for this print piece – quotes that give the impression he was unequivocal in his position – you deliberately left out this one from your 3/7 Slog post (“More on That Proposed Ban …”):
“The First Amendment’s protections for commercial speech only apply to ads for lawful products. Cannabis sales may be lawful under limited circumstances in the state, but they still are forbidden to most of the population as a dangerous product under state and federal law. The court might decide, in other words, that cannabis ads don’t qualify as protected commercial speech.”
I hope you’re not letting concerns about potential ad revenue losses compromise your journalistic integrity.
So any word if that amendment can be found unconstitutional and the remainder allowed to remain a law (Providing it passes the House)?
You gotta admit that ads for medication should never be put out. This applies to antidepressants, antibiotics, or marijuana.
Also I am in favor of full legalization so I don’t really see promotion of marijuana use a big deal but the ads so far ARE promoting use, not medicine. They advertise various chronic strains with sex appeal.
This seems like a reasonable compromise also in light of the fact that as we slide towards full legalization this no-ads amendment should not last too long.
“Lets no lure kids into this sort of [liberal] behavior or lifestyle”. We want them to grow up to be productive suburban conformist wage slaves.
If they can ban tobacco advertising I don’t see what would make this new advertising ban unenforceable.
I am all for legal pot – for everybody. But I can definitely understand the reason for not advertising it’s use to the whole wide world.
I was one of those strongly against changing the rules to allow hard liquor and prescription drugs. It seems very clear that the increase in advertising for these products has not served mankind very well.
Banning ads for cannabis implies cannabis is bad.Cannabis ain’t bad,therefore,banning it (and ads for it)is bad.Syllogisms,anybody?
It’s either legal or it is not.
Currently medical marijuana is legal in the state of Washington.
Why are we wasting time and money on legislation that bans the advertisement of a legal service?
The ACLU came out in favor of this legislation?, really?
Personally I would rather share I-5 with a stoner driving 50 miles an hour than a drunk doing 110.