Black Diamond’s ban on marijuana is going up in smoke.

Elected officials voted 4 – 2 during their Dec. 4 meeting to lift the eight-year ban on marijuana businesses within city limits; however, that ban won’t be over until Jan. 1, 2025.

Councilmembers Debbie Page, Kristiana de Leon, Therron Smith, and Nathan Jones voted to approve the ordinance, while Councilmembers Tamie Deady and Leih Mulvihill voted against it. Councilmember Brad Douglass abstained from the discussion and vote.

For those with hazy memories, Washington passed I-502 to legalize marijuana in 2012, and the first retail stores opened in 2014, including Mr. Bills (now Kush 21) and The Green Door in Buckley. However, Enumclaw and Black Diamond opted to pass legislation that kept marijuana-related businesses from operating inside city limits.

While Enumclaw’s ban is still in place, Black Diamond has spent the last couple years discussing lifting its ban, and Councilmember Debbie Page has moved the conversation forward since she was elected in 2021.

In a recent interview, Page said she wanted to work with city staff and other elected officials in a “thoughtful and methodical way” to potentially bring in a new business opportunity to her area.

“Citizens who currently use cannabis purchase it in a neighboring city before bringing it home, leaving their tax dollars there,” she continued. “It seemed time to see if as a community we were ready to welcome cannabis business back to Black Diamond.”

One of the reasons Page has pushed this is because of the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board’s Cannabis Social Equity program, which aims to “provide a limited number of cannabis retail licenses to individuals disproportionately impacted by the enforcement of cannabis prohibition laws,” a LCB webpage reads.

According to the LCB, more than 40 marijuana retail licenses were forfeited, cancelled, revoked, or were simply not issued when retailers were first allowed to open, “which, from a timing standpoint, put us as a city in a very unique position” to potentially be sited for a marijuana retailer, Page said at the Dec. 4 meeting.

While previous marijuana retail licenses were more-or-less “assigned” to cities, licenses under the Cannabis Social Equity program are being designated to counties instead, leaving license holders to choose where to open their business. King County has been designated eight licenses.

There are potential risks and rewards the council has discussed over the last year — the former being crime; the latter, tax revenue and local jobs.

Some councilmembers expressed concern that a marijuana retailer would attract more crime to Black Diamond; the Seattle Times reported in December 2022 that there were at least 100 armed robberies at pot shops that year (compared to the 40 armed robberies reported in the previous year).

“We should also think about costs that come along with that type of business. City costs, police costs,” Mulvihill said during a June 2023 meeting. “It doesn’t do us any good if we’re able to bring $50,000 [in taxes] into the community if we have to spend the equitable amount keeping it safe for our citizens and our customers that shop there.”

However, Douglass pointed out that bringing in any retail businesses into town comes with a risk of crime.

“To talk about the costs of policing, we’re in a situation in 2023 where I think any type of retail… coming into the city is going to elevate certain costs,” he responded.

As for taxes, the city of Buckley received just over $76,000 in marijuana excise taxes from the state in 2023 for both not having a marijuana ban and having active marijuana retailers operating inside its city limits, according to the LCB. This is on top of any sales taxes those retailers generated, and something Page has said Black Diamond needs.

“The city is still growing its recurring sales tax revenue as we develop our retail footprint,” she said. “We have inconsistent one time revenue that comes from development.”

It’s unclear how much potential tax revenue, if any, Black Diamond would receive. Simply repealing its ban makes the city eligible for a small slice of that excise tax pot, based on population, but it would be allotted more if there were any marijuana sales inside of its city limits.

And on that note, one caveat in the ordinance repealing Black Diamond’s pot ban is that the city intends to use a portion of any tax revenue generated by not only a marijuana retailer, but from any business that falls under the purview of the LCB, for local drug education, prevention, and rehabilitation programs.

“Any sort of substance, if it’s being abused, is often a tip of the iceberg for far larger issues that relate to trauma and otherwise dealing with problems. Legally selling cannabis in our town isn’t a green light to problems that weren’t there before, including if people are unhealthfully coping with their issues, as is almost always the case when it comes to abusing any substance or activity,” Councilmember de Leon said in an email interview. “So, with that in mind, knowing that there are still needs to fill in our city and surrounding areas of long-unfunded mental health programs because mental health has been unaddressed long before COVID made it more on people’s mindsets, let’s at least use the money for things we need to fund anyway that makes our communities better.”

WHERE COULD A POT SHOP GO?

Though Black Diamond’s ban on marijuana is set to expire, that’s no guarantee that a pot shop will open in the city, or that even after all this effort, the city will decide there’s a good place for a marijuana retailer to open.

Under current state rules, marijuana retailers must be located more than 1,000 feet away from schools, playgrounds, recreation centers, child care centers, public parks, public transit centers, libraries, and game arcades. State law also allows cities to expand or shrink that buffer, except in the case of playgrounds and schools.

Black Diamond’s Planning Commission recommends keeping that 1,000-foot barrier, and also recommends that any marijuana retailer looking to operate in the city needs to be zoned for community commercial or neighborhood commercial.

These recommendations, if acted on by the city council, would severely limit where a store can open inside Black Diamond. According to a city zoning map, these restrictions would restrict operations to a few dozen parcels along SR 169, north of Roberts Drive, and just a handful of parcels in a far-away northwest corner of the city, near Lake Sawyer Grocery and the Lake Sawyer Community Club.

Discussions on where a marijuana retailer, or other marijuana-related businesses, could operate inside city limits will be ongoing as the Black Diamond City Council plans out its 2025 Comprehensive Plan, due at the end of the year.

It’s unclear when Cannabis Social Equity program licenses will be awarded in King County, but one was recently awarded in Snohomish County, with a retailer to open in Arlington.