Good morning chairperson and members Garrett ball draw staff and guests lobbies are open recording has begun.
Just look at the liquor and cannabis board board meeting for May 21 2024. Our first item is a policy and rules team updated and board meeting prep, and I will turn it over to Cassidy West.
i Good morning to postman, and Board Member Vollendroff. I have not changed my background. I really wish I was here. Because you see behind me so let me
just say real quick member Garrett is with us too. She doesn't have video, but she is online. I wanted everyone to be sure we knew that. Thank you. Sorry. Go ahead.
Yep, I see her there. Alright, great. Thank you. So I'll go ahead and start with. So today Danna will be we have Daniel presenting today up viewing what they're going to be presenting tomorrow. So Denise will be presenting a petition response tomorrow about banning disposable vape cannabis vape devices containing lithium ion batteries. And Daniel will be presenting a petition response on employee stock ownership plans. And then Jeff will be also presenting tomorrow a 1014 to initiate rulemaking for the cannabis waste bill. And that's Senate Bill 5376. So they'll give you a preview of that today. And then tomorrow that will request board action on those. Also tomorrow, we have this social equity hybrid engagement session. And so that will be held at Highline Community College as well as online. And that will be from 530 to 7:30pm. And we will be seeing feedback on the proposed draft rules. We have received a couple of petitions. I forgot to mention last update that we have received a petition on April 29, requesting that the board consider amending black 314 55 106 To clarify the principle to clarify the principle display panel requirements so labeling we also received a petition on May 17 requesting requesting that the board consider amending BOC 314 55 570 to allow current social equity licensees the option to locate anywhere within Washington state. And though you received a petition on 518 What was that to date a couple of days ago requesting the board consider amending wack 314 55 095 to increase the amount of THC that may be in a single serving. And with that, so next board meeting, Daniel will be I'm sorry, not Daniel. We will have the medical cannabis excise tax comments ending on the 29th. And then we will also have the Yep. On the 29th. Sorry. And then looking at apologies, we have so many projects here. And then looking going on to June. We'll have on June 5, the public hearing for the medical cannabis endorsements. We'll also have the public hearing on the prohibited conduct rulemaking. And then we are going to be engaging with stakeholders on the Monterey miners on premises project in June. But just given the amount of engagement that's been going on and and number of real projects we are working on what that looks like right now. And then to at the end of June. So on the June 18 meeting, you have quite a busy schedule. So we'll be presenting a petition the petition response to I'm sorry to amend the social equity rules related to licensed mobility. All also on June 18. And Daniel will be filing the CR 123 to adopt the rules for medical cannabis endorsements. Also he will be filing the 102 on medical cannabis excise tax and I will be filing a one or two on social equity. I will also be filing one or two on the THC bill. So oh in one For the prohibited conduct alcohol will be also presented on June 18. So that's a busy. I'll stop there any questions about any of that
on the list you just gave us at the end on the 18th. And you meant is that a 102? For social equity? You'll present to us on the 18th.
Yes, the 102 on the 18th? That's correct.
Okay. Any other questions for Cassidy? Okay.
Okay. I'll pass it on to one of the rules coordinators, who is up next,
whoever pops up. Okay.
Thank you.
Denise Laflamme Hello.
Hello. Good morning. Good morning Chair, postman, and board members Garrett and Vollendroff. This morning, I'm going to preview a real petition I will be presenting for action at tomorrow's board meeting on Wednesday, May 22. As I will explain, the director's office is recommending denying the petition for rulemaking because we believe that is what is being being asked is outside the scope of lcbs authority. On March 2420 24, a concerned producer and processor who wished to remain anonymous, submitted a petition to the board to initiate rulemaking to consider adopting rules to ban single use disposable cannabis vape devices containing lithium ion batteries. The petitioner cites concerns about harmful chemicals and heavy metals being released into the environment due to the large number of these devices being discarded, and the lack of available disposal disposal methods. The petitioners cited backlash from the industry as the reason they're and we have received questions about accepting a petition where the petitioner requests anonymity. These Disposable single use cannabis vape devices are very popular. They are sold as all in one devices containing a prefilled cartridge attached to a battery. They typically can be refilled or disassembled to remove just the battery to reuse or recycle. The production and disposal of vape devices containing lithium ion batteries raise a variety of environmental health issues including using limited resources like lithium, cobalt and graphite to make them wasting energy rich, rich lithium ion batteries that are designed to be recharged and reused. The hazards associated with the batteries overheating and catching fire if damaged or crushed, risk of environmental contamination from improper disposal and lack of approved or easy ways for individuals to recycle them. Under our CW 6953 42, the board has broad statutory authority to establish rules related to product quality standards and packaging and labeling requirements to promote public health and safety. However, banning these devices appears to be outside of the scope of lcbs authority based on the types of environmental health concerns related to these products at this time. At tomorrow's meeting, I will provide information about lithium ion batteries in general, the challenges of recycling these products and information provided by the Department of Ecology and health about their concerns and activities related to these devices. And I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you.
Thanks. Don't see any questions.
I have one quick question. I just I just have one quick question. And I was wondering, Denise in your research on this. Where are the majority of these devices manufactured? Are they manufactured here in the US? Are they X imported or work just out of curiosity more than than anything?
Um, that's a that's a good question. I there are some that are imported. But since they're all in one, you know, they have to be manufactured. I mean, I don't think we're importing them. So since they're all in one device, though, it has a I see. Yeah, it's not like you can just import part of it and then put them together there. They have. They're just all together. So okay, I am not 100% sure on that. All right.
Thank you.
No, thank you.
Thank you. Okay. Do you have another one? This one, or do we go to Daniel?
Good. Morning chair, postman members, Garrett Vollendroff. This morning, I'm previewing. A response to a petition for rulemaking received March 26 2024, from the Washington cannabusiness Association regarding the use of employee stock ownership plans known as Aesop's and I'll be presenting a recommendation on that during tomorrow's board meeting. Before proceeding further, I'd like to give a disclaimer due to the complicated tax implications and explanation that I'll be going into today and tomorrow. While I myself am a licensed attorney, nothing that I'm saying here should be construed or taken as legal advice for particular individuals regarding particular situations. Anyone who has any questions about their particular business structure or tax implications thereof should contact an attorney. The petition requests amendment of Lac 314 50 5035, which is the board's true party of interest rule or TPI rule for cannabis licensees. This rule identifies various business and entity structures such as limited liability corporations, partnerships, sole proprietorships, and others. In identifies who in each of these business structures needs to be vetted for satisfying Washington residency requirements, as well as other true party of interest requirements. There's a similar rule for alcohol licensees that's found in whack 314 Oh 7035. Although the rules aren't identical. During the 2023 legislative session, the legislature passed substitute Senate Bill 5096, known as the expanding employee ownership Act, which provided the statutory definition for an employee stock ownership plan or an ESOP and referenced federal statutes and regulations on the top like, an ESOP is in the most basic description, a stock bonus contribution plan that serves as a sort of retirement plan for employees while also providing tax benefits for businesses. And as I will explain potentially tremendous tax benefits for cannabis businesses, in particular, how an ESOP works is that a business creates a trust, it uses money typically obtained from a loan to buy shares of itself and place those shares into the trust along with annual contributions every year as the loan gets paid down. And that money is used to buy the shares, those shares get added to the trust, employees in turn get fractional shares of the trust. And the longer they stay at the company, the larger their portion of trust ownership gets. And furthermore, the as their portion gets larger, they also get more shares added. The idea is, the longer that an employee's at the company, the bigger their share of the trust is and the more shares or stocks they have in the company. Once an employee leaves the company, either through retirement or whatever voluntary separation, they sell their share of the ESOP trust back to the company, and whatever the going rate, then is for stocks. So the idea is assuming that the company's value has increased since they started, and they have more shares of the trust, they get to sell those stocks back to the company, which in turn, then can reinvest it into the ESOP, and they get a greater value on return than they had. And in this way, the employee gets a sort of a retirement sort of plan that it should increase in value as time goes on. With lots of business sectors, this serves as a way to motivate and encourage employee retention, and to create Goodwill for employees because they know that their employer isn't, for example, being bought out by some sort of large hedge fund, not that there's anything inherently wrong with hedge funds, but it can create goodwill and that gives a sense that, you know, our company as an employee is owned by us. The structure has become increasingly popular for cannabis businesses, however, because of the tax benefits, so as you probably know, and again, this is part of where I'm gonna get my disclaimer again, this is not intended as legal advice. This is research any sort of questions on this should be directed to a lawyer that isn't me, but federal tax law currently prohibits cannabis businesses from taking any deductions on their federal income taxes under what's called Section 280 II. So in Washington State, we don't have any state income tax, but there still is federal income tax. And unlike the vast majority of businesses in our state cannabis licensees cannot take any deductions on their federal income tax. And that's because of the section 280 e bar. And this is the same for cannabis businesses across the country. None of them can do federal tax deductions. However, this is where the ESOP thing comes in. So a company that has converted itself to an ESOP is entirely owned by its employees. And because of the way an ESOP trust is structured, and assuming that the company is also an S Corporation, which is a specific type of tax entity, an ESOP a company that totally under the ESOP trust is exempt from federal income tax on the business level. So if you don't owe any federal income tax, it doesn't matter whether or not you can take any tax deductions because there's no baseline tax liability that you need to deduct from. So it's not to clarify that an ESOP business gets to use gets to use tax deductions or it gets to deduct in ways that other non ESOP companies can't. It's that they don't have a tax of federal income tax liability to begin with, right. And so, this has become increasingly popular recently. And in December 2023, there was a large cannabis business on the East Coast that got a lot of attention in the press because it converted itself to an ESOP structure. Getting to sort of Washington's situation in particular, we've had several licensees that have approached the LCB staff at multiple levels over the past six to nine months about submitting a proposed ESOP structure to see if it could potentially pass the true party of interest vetting process, however, based on feedback that they've gotten about some concerns that I'm about to get into. This hasn't been submitted formally. So just to clarify, there hasn't been a business that has submitted an application for ESOP structure and been formally denied. The problem with the east with the two party of interest vetting comes in because in order to qualify as an ESOP on a federal tax level, the participating employees need to have a certain degree of control via the trust documents over the trust and the shares of the company, to a degree that from a licensing perspective, each individual employee may need to get vetted for true party of interest vetting. In addition to this being complicated and very labor intensive, it may create a situation where a licensee would not be allowed to have any participating employees that are not Washington residents. So this is where the petition really comes in, because the petitioner is requesting that the rule change in the TPI rule be done to state specifically that an employee doesn't need to be vetted for residency solely because of the ESOP entity structure. Now, I know I've already explained a lot of this a lot hadn't even gotten to our recommendation, our staff recommendation for the director's office is to accept this petition.
And that's just because in part because of the complicated nature of this particular topic, we think that going through formal rulemaking process will not guarantee the will actually end up with rule changes is going to be the best and more most robust way to have a really developed and thorough conversation on this. Now, I will say that two of our larger divisions have both expressed concern about these rule changes. And they did based in some of the TPI features that I brought up, enforcement education division and licensing have both stated that they're concerned about the exact issue. I've talked about the extent to which employees or folks that might not meet residency requirements can end up being de facto owners of these cannabis licensees. I could go into I'll go into more detail about their concerns tomorrow, but that's exactly, you know, they're addressing the concerns raised about how we're going to square this ESOP entity structure with the TPI analysis and ensuring that we don't let non resident non Washington residents effectively own parts of cannabis licensees would be the main topic of any rulemaking that would happen. And the last thing is I know that I mentioned at the beginning that there's actually legislation on this last year. This legislation, in addition to creating a definition of ESOP also created the ESOP Task Force as it were, that multiple other agencies are involved. With the Department of Revenue is the agency that be responsible for implementing this because like I mentioned, there are tremendous tax benefits to an ESOP, that are also on a state level. And we've actually already reached out to the Department of Revenue to talk to them about it because they are contemplating engaging in rulemaking on this topic. And if we accept this petition, we may have to delay starting our rulemaking until after they've completed theirs. Lastly, you know, I know this has been really complicated. I'm happy to answer any questions, but from last thing I wanted to mention was that from a policy perspective, the legislature did make clear that they wanted to, to the extent possible, encourage the use of Aesop's. And that was also a big part of why we recommended approving this petition. But, you know, as you've probably gleaned, it's going to be complicated. We're gonna have to, you know, coordinate with multiple different state agencies on this. And it's not clear that we'll be able to address all the issues, but we do think it's worth worth an attempt. And lastly, I know I already said this twice. But just to cover myself, again, nothing I've said has been meant as legal advice. If you have any question, ask a lawyer, and preferably a lawyer, that isn't me.
That's the best advice I've ever gotten from a lawyer. I know you've done a ton of work on this, I think your explanation of this was great. Thank you for taking us through it. And that level of detail, because it is really complicated. We've been talking about it here with folks. Two years, I think when it first came up, and I agree, it's, it's it's complicated, but it is worthy of our look, I think our you know, the tax implications are in our bag. It really, I've always just been focused on the TPI and it said if as long as we can meet our standards for two party of interest, we would, you know, agree with the state policy of trying to encourage employee stock ownership. So anyway, I look forward to it. Thanks for all of it. Appreciate.
Thank you.
Any other questions on this one? Okay, thank you. Next is Jeff Kildahl. Good morning.
Yeah. Good morning Chair, postman and board members Garrett and Vollendroff. At tomorrow's meeting, I will request your approval to file a CR 101 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to implement Senate Bill 5376 Regarding the sales of cannabis waste. This bill permits a licensed cannabis producer, or licensed cannabis processor to sell cannabis waste to persons who are not cannabis licensees under certain conditions. And these conditions are if the cannabis waste is not designated as hazardous waste if the licensee notifies the board and the Washington State Department of Agriculture before the sale takes place, and the third condition the licensee makes all sales available to the public on an equal and non discriminatory basis. This bill also creates a definition of cannabis waste, as solid waste generated during cannabis production or processing. That has a THC concentration of 0.3% or less cannabis waste as defined here. The bill does not include hemp, or industrial hemp, which already have existing definitions in our CW 15 140. zero to zero. The current regulations regarding cannabis waste, which are in whack 314 55 Zero 97 require cannabis waste that is not classified as dangerous to be made unusable before disposal. To make the cannabis waste unusable. It must be ground up and mixed with other materials to at least a 50% Non cannabis content. compostable waste can be mixed with food waste yard waste, or vegetable oils. While non Kumble compostable waste can be combined with materials such as paper, cardboard, plastic, soil or other approved materials. If approved tomorrow, the CR 101 for sales of cannabis waste will be filed may 22 2024. And a public comment period will be open until July 6 2024. We plan to be filing the CR 102 With proposal language on July 17, and to hold the public hearing on August 28th. And if all goes according to schedule Final Rule language would be adopted in the form of the CR 103 On September 11, which if approved, would have the final rule taking effect on October 12. 2024 Thank you. And I can answer any questions about this.
Any questions from the board? No. Okay, thank you, Mr. Kildahl.
Thank you.
I think that's it from the rules team. We've heard from every member of the rules team, so that must be it. If there's no objection from the board, I'm going to just swap two quick things here on agenda and move board members executive system reports to the end of the agenda so we can get to Professor Kilmer. Here, no objection. I'll actually turn it over to Kristen Haley, our public health education liaison and she can introduce our guest.
Hello, and good morning. I am happy to be bringing in Dr. Jason Kilmer. He is a friend and for anyone in the public health and prevention space in Washington and nationwide. He is an icon in the field for prevention research. I know he hates these accolades, but they're they're warranted. For prevention research, specifically with alcohol and cannabis among young adults. He has been leading as the principal investigator, the young adult health survey for the last 10 years. And anytime you have 10 cycles of survey data, it is for those of us who nerd out on this sort of thing, just goldmine for insights and trends. And I think for all of us in the prevention space, who had heard Jason give this presentation, it has been a valuable, stepping off point to see where we are and how far we've come where we need to go, as far as you know, preventing risks related to health and safety. And not only cannabis and alcohol use, but as I'm sure Dr. Kilmer will talk about mental health and other variables that our young adults experience. So with that, I will hand it over to Jason and I hope we can have a discussion at the end of his presentation. Thank you. Thanks for having him.
You bet
you for the far too generous and far too kind introduction. All right. If I've done this right, you can see my PowerPoint presentation, and I will just Okay, perfect. I'll dive right into this. Thanks for the chance to work with you. As you heard. I'm Jason Kilmer at the University of Washington where there are 18 days until graduation. Yeah, well, for those of us keeping score, and to be clear, I'm totally keeping score. So before we get started, a big thank you to Sandy Salivarius and Sarah Mariani at the Division of Behavioral Health and recovery, who have been our partners on this project. Our our funding on this project comes from DB HR. Shout out. And thank you to Kristen and Dustin at the liquor and cannabis board for the invitation to work with you today. Thanks to all of you for your interest in this topic, our younger Health Survey launched in 2014. And again, it's been funded from the start by the Division of Behavioral Health Recovery. We have a small but mighty team and for those that have heard me present before, thank you for your patience with this brief recap for people who haven't. When we met in 2013, to decide to try and decide how do we want to approach this survey. From day one, we didn't want to just do a random sample of young adults in Washington, we had great data. Thanks to the Healthy Youth Survey on sixth, eighth, 10th, and 12th graders, there are numerous national data sets for adults in general. But there's this higher risk or even at risk group of 18 to 25 year olds. And when looking at what people were doing at the time, there was an interest in doing a blend of a random sample of participants from the Department of Licensing as well as using social marketing social media to recruit participants. One of the downsides to solely relying on a random sample, as you only get people with stable housing, you only get people who actually update their address when they move. So we did this combo of a random sample from the Department of Licensing, plus online advertising, which allowed us as data were coming in to determine do we need to turn up the dial in certain regions of Washington with certain demographic categories and so on. So it is by design a convenient sample, not a random sample. And then the state epidemiological outcomes workgroup had said your data are impressive to boost, you know, faith that we have in the meaningfulness and to improve generalizability could you use POST stratification weights? We thought that was a great suggestion. So using census data, we weighted the data on on on sex assigned at birth, race in geographic region of Washington. The very good news is the way to data consistently is very similar to the non weighted. I'll be presenting weighted data across 10 years in 10 cohorts, as well as giving you a glimpse at some variables of interest that I thought would be helpful for your discussion. So every year we collect a brand new cohort of 18 to 25 year olds. Look at this, I mean, I feel so lucky to be a part of this. Most grants, you get five years of funding. And if you're lucky, there's a no cost extension. So for us to be able to look at 10 separate time points. And the beauty of a web based survey is even when things like the pandemic happened, we didn't need to pause in what we were doing. So we have 18,711, unique 18 to 25 year olds in Washington State. Every year, we follow up with previous cohorts so that the people we met as 18, and 25 year olds in 2014, are largely 28 to 35. Now, in year 10, and 2023, we paused on cohorts, 234, and five, because of budget reasons, but got follow up data from cohorts, 1678, and nine. So for today, I'm going to show you across cohorts, these are different people, the snapshot across 10 time points. There's a lot going on in this slide. And just to orient you to what we're looking at, in columns are each cohort and the year in which we collected the data on the far right column is the overall total across 10 years. And the rows are 18 to 20 year olds, 21 to 25 year olds, and the total, I'll make sure that I send the handouts of the slides if people need to look at any of this more closely, you can. But the first thing we do is if you look at Cohort One, we had 43.51% of young adults report, non medical cannabis use. cohorts, 4567, and eight, their overall average are statistically significantly higher than what we see in 2014. And I should say, and I apologize, I didn't 2014 We did all we could to collect as much data as possible. Before retail stores opened. There were some participants that trickled in a bit after those first handful of stores opened. But this is a good pre implementation time point. Sorry, I didn't mention that during the whirlwind review of our methodology. But when we look at linear trend, and this is something we've been interested in, there's a statistically significant, increasing linear trend from Cohort One to cohort 10. In general, in this age group, past year, non medical use is increasing. Yet you see a significant age by cohort interaction. And when we do a deeper dive, it's those with legal access to the retail market the 21 to 25 year olds, driving this overall increase, there's no significant trend among 1818 and 20 year olds, there's a significant increasing trend over time, and the 21 to 25 year olds. For people that say I'm much more visual than all these numbers. I plotted this just to try and bring these data to life. And you can see pre stores opening pre implementation that 21 to 25 year olds and 18 to 20 year olds were virtually identical. You can see how this has split and branched over time. least monthly, nonmedical use cohorts 56789 are all significantly higher than Cohort One, you're gonna see a theme emerging as I quickly go through this because significant increasing linear trend among 18 to 25 year olds, we see a significant age by cohort interaction. And when we do a deeper dive, it's the 21 to 25 year olds driving that overall trend. Because there's no trend among those under 21. There's a significant increasing trend for those over 21. And if you want to see it graphically, there's the graphic blip what, at least weekly cohorts, seven, eight, and 10 are all statistically significantly higher than Cohort One yet again, significant increasing linear trend, yet again, a significant age by cohort interaction. And yet again, it's the 21 to 25 year olds driving that. So this story has stabilized in a way, in the sense that when we had one or two years of data, we really didn't know what we were looking at yet. But with a decade of data, it buys us the opportunity to look over time and see that this this impact on frequency. Just to bring it to life graphically, there's the at least weekly use. And then finally, one of the things that we've looked at again, there's a lot on these slides, I've worked very hard to make sure my PowerPoints don't have tons of stuff on them. But this has a ton of stuff on it. We asked people the frequency in the past year, what is your use look like? And it includes I haven't used, I've used once, two to three times a year and so on. And then you can see across as you work your way left to right, these are the data for each cohort. Cohorts four through 10 all have significantly higher odds of more frequent cannabis use. What does that mean statistically, as we look at where most people are endorsing in terms of frequency it's shifting to more frequent and of note is that daily use is higher in cohort 10. than any time I circled on the far on the far right here that we're up to 10.39% reporting. daily use, when we split that we did not run significance tests on this, this was purely just to bring this to life for you. You can see again, among Cohort One pre stores opening, daily use for non medical purposes was really identical, you can see that we're approaching 14% of the 2020 to 25 year olds reporting daily use. And we've published on not only has use gone up, but endorsing symptoms associated with cannabis use disorder has gone up as well. So certainly as frequency goes up risk for things like cannabis use disorder increases well. This is what people actually do. We asked them, What do you think the typical person your age does? Now, we did have I don't know when I hover my cursor, if you can see it, like went on Zoom. But you can see that in 2021, it was the one time that over half of 18 to 25 year olds actually did report cannabis use. Our rates in general have been in the for the 40s, or even upper 40s reporting past your use. So we ask people, What is the typical person do? The right answer is the typical person does not use. I've published on work using college campuses in western Washington, where we ask people about their use the typical categories that people don't use, and only about 2% of people say I correctly believe say that correctly that the typical person doesn't use that 2% emerges here. Throughout our in the published literature, we do see that about 2% of people correctly say I don't think most people use yet.
In our own data set with this age group, we see that same 2% holds. Why does that matter? Decades of research show that when people perceive substance use being more prevalent than it really is, it can contribute to their initiation of use, that can keep whatever use is happening, persisting, and it can even be associated with risks. Sandra Wilson is a research that show that the most significant misperceptions of cannabis use come from those that use most frequently. When we look at perceptions of daily use, you can see that by cohort 10, almost one in five young adults in Washington think the typical person there you age uses daily. So one more just to add more clutter to this slide. In cohort 10. You know, 20.84% use at least weekly meaning most people don't use at least weekly, yet. 69.29% of our young adults think the typical person their age uses at that frequency. We ask people if they've used the past 30 days where have you obtained cannabis among 1819 and 20 year olds, we continue to see getting it from friends be decreasing significantly. We continue to see getting it from someone with a medical card decreasing significantly, getting at a party was newly significant in a decreasing trend. Getting it some other way it was newly significant, will continue to be significant as we see a significant increasing trend in giving money to someone to get it for them. We have stealing it from a store or dispensary. We saw nonzero numbers during 2020 2021 and 2024. That leads to a significant increasing trend. But I'll draw your attention to getting it from parents with their permission. I circled on the far right, that now the third most common source of cannabis for 1818 20 year olds are getting it from caregivers, guardians and parents with their permission. Certainly the state of Washington has done a lot around things like start talking now to make sure that parents caregivers and guardians can be our partners in prevention. And certainly there's the chance there's more work to be done with parents of 1819 and 20 year olds. Among 21 to 25 year olds, we see a significant decreasing trend in most sources. The one increasing area is getting it from a retail store. We look at driving after cannabis use in Washington. Our per se limit for DUI is five nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood. And at the time, voters voted on a 502 the one public study that was out there looking at how long it takes to drop below five nanograms was by Groden. Herman and colleagues and it said people need to wait three hours. Certainly we're seeing very different timeframe suggested now. But using that because when we launched that was the one guidance we asked people during the past 30 days. How many times did you drive a car or other vehicle within three hours after using cannabis? I remember when we share these data in 2014, there was some anxiety that essentially half of young adults that used cannabis also said I've driven within three hours of using. The good news is you can see that there's declines in driving after cannabis use between cohorts three through 10. in cohort one, as well as a significant linear trend. Yet, we still see over 30% 31.31% reporting that at least once in the past 30 days, they've driven within three hours of use. Medical Cannabis, we really don't see much movement. In this age group cohort nine was significantly lower. In terms of past year, medical cannabis use in cohort one, that is literally the only significant difference. Same difference on overall frequency cohort nine was different than Cohort One. Yet perceptions of medical use are increasing significantly, both a linear trend in the past seven cohorts are higher than Cohort One, I'm throwing a lot at you. Again, we'll have time for discussion. But just I could spend all day going through our dataset because it's such a rich data set. But just to summarize on one slide for other substances, we see a significant decreasing trend in alcohol at least once per year, in alcohol at least monthly in cigarettes at least once in the past year, in pain relievers to get high at least once in the past year, and heroin use at least once in the past year. When we look at perceived risk, we used to see the perceived physical and psychological slash emotional and even cognitive risk of both occasional and regular cannabis use was declining. That finding for perceptions of risk associated regular cannabis use is no longer significantly declining, it was going down and has been trending up such that any significant trend over time has essentially washed out. But there is that perceived a decreasing trend in perceived physical incise psychological or emotional risk of using occasionally with alcohol. And there's a significant increase in risk in perceived physical risk and psychological risk of two drinks every day. What has never been significant, just because it's always been high is the 18 to 25 year olds perceive five or more drinks every weekend to be a very risky practice. So I tried to look at none of this reflects any significance tests. But when I got the invitation, and I thought what might be useful for your group, I limited myself to seven slides, seven snapshots of frequency data from cohort 10. This is just the brand new cohort in 2023 with finding split by 18 to 20 and 21 to 25. I know that typically when I present people say do you have data on blank, and I always have to look it up. And so I thought just getting that data on blank out here. Again, no significance tests, but you can see alcohol use rates being 87% to 2125 year olds in the past year 57% for those under 21. Very comparable rates of vaping. hovering around a quarter of young adults, cigarette use a little higher among 21 to 25 year olds. cannabis for medical purposes. Very different of course in cannabis for non medical purposes. We've included in quotes synthetic marijuana K to spice exactly as it's listed on the survey. That's just that's two to 3% heroin use. Fortunately very, very low. Literally no one endorsed it. Among 18 to 20 year olds under under 1%. half a percent endorsed among 21 to 25 year olds, pain relievers to get high, two ish percent methamphetamines, one and a half to 2%. Cocaine 2% Among 18 to 20 year olds 6% Among 21 to 25 year olds, reporting at least using using at least once in the past year, create a one and a half 2.3 for 21 to 25 year olds, we made a distinction between full dose hallucinogen and microdose hallucinogen really didn't matter in terms of endorsement, and especially given concern about fentanyl. We asked specifically about fentanyl use that was fortunately under 1%. With both age groups booming this is of interest to the liquor and cannabis board. We ask people about if they drink alcohol, what type of alcohol they usually drink. So the NS you see her are among those that endorsed alcohol use. And you can see liquor, hard alcohol for those 18 to 20 Coming in at 40% beer than 19% Hard seltzers a little over 11% among the 21 to 25 year olds, almost a tie between liquor 25% beer at 24% And then hard cider at 9.66%. We asked if you use cannabis in the past 30 days, what was the typical potency of THC in your preferred method of use? Now 40.8% of the 1820 year old said, I don't know 34 34.51% of the 21 to 25 year old said, I don't know. When you look at the 1819 and 20 year olds, of those that actually know the range, essentially half are reporting 70 71% and higher. When you look at that 71 To 80% 81 to 90 plus percent. Those 1818 and 20 year olds, that's what they're endorsing among the 21 to 25 year olds. Graphing this is interesting because there's this almost bimodal distribution of of those that know 21 to 30%, but then also the 81 to 90% or higher. We added items on CBD applied topically CBD used any other way Delta eight THC and delta nine THC of interest to this group 19% of the 21 to 25 year olds 15% of the 18 to 20 year olds reporting topical CBD use any other way, it's 23% of the over 2113 and a half percent of the under 21 Delta eight in that 910 11% range, delta 10 in that 678 percent range. This is not our data. This is from the National Center for Health Statistics and Centers for Disease Control household pulse survey. A lot of times during COVID, the narrative was you know, what are these young adults worried about? You know, they're not having to go to class, at least the story early on was people were partying, the Centers for Disease Control tracked
in early 2020 symptoms of anxiety disorder in these upper blueish bars. And it's symptoms of depressive disorder in these more green colored bars. And I'm showing you the data through 2022. This is all adults over age 18. Here's the 18 to 29 year olds, what a dramatic difference. And so this is a group struggling with and reporting struggles with mental health. This is a group that we want to be mindful of what they're reporting about mental health. So in wrapping up my seven slides of interest, we asked over the last two weeks, how often have you been bothered by any of the following problems. We have over 30% of 18 to 20 year olds saying more than half the days feeling nervous, anxious or on edge, much higher over 38% of the 21 to 25 year olds endorsing that anxiety item. Not being able to stop or control we're in a quarter over a quarter of the 1819 and 20 year olds approaching 27% of the 21 to 25 year olds, more than half the days, little interest or pleasure in doing things almost 22% of the 1818 20 year olds over 25% of the 21 to 25 year olds in nursing more than half the days feeling down depressed or hopeless. We see over 19% of the 1818 20 year olds, over 21% of those over 21. So point 24, we'll see our 11th year of data collection, we had paused on longitudinal follow up of cohorts two through five, and with a partnership between the Department of Health and dva HR will actually be able to collect data from all previous 10 cohorts this year, and a new cohort 11 Which is amazing. Dr. Katarina Goodman Nova, recognizing how much data we have applied for and obtained a secondary data analysis grant that led to several publications using the young adult health survey beyond the dissemination that we do as part of our contract. And with the success of that actually received a second secondary data analysis grant focusing on changes before and during COVID 19 pandemic. And just to this will be in your handouts if any of these articles are of interest, but we've had articles looking at cannabis retail outlet availability, and neighborhood disadvantage impacts on this population in terms of trends of use after implementation turns in alcohol, cigarette e cigarette and non prescribed pain reliever use after legalization such as substance specific risk factors. The association between cannabis use and non medical pain reliever use looking at more subgroups after implementation of legalization. And finally, trajectories and transitions around cannabis and nicotine use as well as cannabis impaired driving around COVID which is some amazing work. So that was a lot. That was a lot on purpose. I hope there's still time for discussion. But with that, I'll thank our funders. Again. I'll thank Kristin and Dustin for the invitation. I will stop sharing my screen and see what questions or comments there may be.
Great, thank you. What a what a treasure trove of data. Questions first from.
Yeah, I have a couple of questions, and maybe some comments. So first of all, Jason, thank you so much for coming today. And I really appreciate the relationship that you have with Kristin and other folks within the LCB. The information that you provide, I think, is incredibly important to us, and useful in policy development. And so when I was listening to all of the various slides, and I think that there were more than seven important slides, I think there were many important slides. But I think about policy and the data that you provided. And I wrote down policy related to access to packaging, to potency to advertising to mental health. So there's just a lot of good data here that we will be looking at through the lens of policy. So you're a smart guy. Let's say the governor comes along and says, Hey, Jason, we want you to be on the liquor and cannabis board, and you have this data in front of you tell me what you would do? Where would you focus on if you were looking at this data? And you were on this board and making decisions related to policy?
Say fascinating hypothetical questions. You know, it's funny, because every week, I think we get emails that say, a state employees, you know, be careful not to come out for or against a candidate or an initiative, and you can answer questions when addressed. And since, hypothetically, that question would have been addressed. I will say this, I work on a college campus. I'm chair of our state's college coalition. So I get to see what our partner campuses do. There's a lot of effort when people start school to provide orientation and prevention content for incoming first year students. And depending on what campus you're at, that's kind of where it ends. And so I think when I look at these data, I think that certainly continuing to add to what we know has an impact in prevention in general with this age group. But I think that the data that we have suggests, what our campuses what is our state offering from a prevention standpoint, for people 21 and older. You know, for a while on college campuses, there was some interest in researching 21st Birthday interventions when people turn 21. If they're going on a 21 run, what do we need to do to make sure that harm can be reduced on that evening. And, you know, there's some mixed findings on some of that 21st Birthday research, but there is an opportunity to make sure that what we do about prevention doesn't just stop after they started college. It doesn't just stop once they leave high school. And so I do think that looking at prevention content that fits across this 18 to 25 year old age group can be really important.
Thank you. I have one more quick question. And that was I and I may have missed it. Did you tell ask about poly substance involvement? Like I'm hearing a lot of young people talk about being out and about and eating gummies and then going into bars and drinking? And I'm just curious about that use of substances in combination and what you know about that. And potential policy?
Do you have those data and we added them early on, we were told that is the second we even heard rumblings of what a number of people were calling crossfading using alcohol and cannabis at the same time. So to the effects overlap, we added an item specifically looking at that we even added an item about driving after that simultaneous use. So we do have those data that I would happily share another time. But that locally, Christine Lee has been doing a lot of research on simultaneous use of alcohol and cannabis. And I always look at her as kind of our best local expert on that probably substance use.
Great, thank you.
You're welcome. Thanks for the kind words.
been prepared any questions? I've got a couple one seems to be good news, right that that the under 21 has not gone up as we're already down 10 years, does that surprise you from what you would have thought? Back in 2014?
Back in 2014, there was an intentional effort to really make sure that I mean, I can only speak to what happens on college campuses. But as a member of the Washington health youth coalition, I can also speak to what I saw our partners in high schools and middle schools do you know the state really rolled out the buttons Life Skills program to do all they could around prevention efforts early on. But But I also I think of the college campuses that I get to work with. There was a very, very intentional effort to do all they could with incoming first year students, so it's so hard to separate out you obviously can't make any causal connections but um At the very same time, we were looking at all of this, there was also, I think, a very intentional effort to put as much prevention content out there for, especially on college campuses, incoming students, for the most part were 1819 and 20.
And I think I asked you this last time, but remind me it is. Should we expect, though, that people who come of age 21, when cannabis is already legal, are going to be more likely to use it as an adult than those who of us that were 50 years old when it came legal? You know, if it's legal the day you turn 21? Does it just seem more? Okay?
It's an interesting question, because it involves attitudes as well, we do collect some of the data on attitudes, what we are finding in our sample. It's amazing, I cut anything in a in a slide presentation, I have this many slides. But what we're finding is that usually, when you look at age of initiation, from a universal prevention standpoint, you want to see it go up, because what it means is, you're delaying initiation of use. And that's true. If prevalence and incidence of use remains flat. Our age of initiation is going up for cannabis use among 18 to 25 year olds, along with an increasing pass to your frequency of use. And what that means is there's more people starting, there's more people trying that when you look back historically, typically may have not initiated use. So it's a fascinating question that would, of course, necessitate collecting data from people beyond the age group we look at right now. I mean, that's there's a dream study right there. That's cool.
Yeah, let's put that on the list. The one one thing that made me raise my eyebrows a little bit was that the, what I thought was the the high number of people who claim they know what the THC level is, do you believe those numbers? I'm just surprised that young consumers in particular, are so attuned to what's might be on that label.
I mean, we always think critically about self report data we have, we do a lot to check reliability and validity of our items, including making sure that who's filling out the surveys, who's really filling out the survey, but I think it was an empirical question that we wanted to add, I think there was a sense of do people know what they're getting, and what we would need to do next. You literally just saw the frequencies hot off the press, what we would need to do next is do the people that get it themselves at a retail store, I'm making this number up, but do 100% of them know what the THC content is because they they directly bought into the store. So I think that really, you know, the the 1818 20 year olds that say they give money to somebody to get it for them, or a parent, guardian or caregiver got it for him. Theoretically, if that's coming back with a heads up, this was the potency, they may know more than the person getting illegally, the person getting on the illicit market. And so that's that's the that would be the super cool. Next set of analyses to do is to take a look at based on source. What was people's report of potency?
Well, go ahead.
I was just gonna add to that, I think as a foreshadowing for Tyler's presentation that he'll give, I think in a month or so about the cannabis consumer education survey that we did in partnership with DOH. We also asked about, you know, whether people know the THC content, and we asked some knowledge based questions around that. And we're, I don't know if we can even say surprise, but it sort of, I think was in line with where your head is at David, that people just aren't really sure. Yeah, I think that's worth noting.
And then Doctor Kilmer when you talk about, you know, where you're getting it from really makes a difference in what you know about that product, which is the other thing I was thinking for our purposes. Like on this if if people are getting it from the regulated stores. Again, I take that as a good thing. That's what we're trying to do is move it all there. But when people's and somebody asked me about this one the other day, and I don't think so on the one about stolen product, are they saying they're stealing from a licensed store necessarily? Or could they be stealing from anybody or anywhere because I just that was a kind of a bigger number than I would have thought could steal cannabis from a 502 store.
I could pull up the survey item itself and I will do that. The way it's worded was pretty much what you saw on on the slide. So certainly we would need to do qualitative and or even follow up interviews to say hey, you told us you stole it. Where Where did you do that we we certainly are in position to do that. But the way it is exactly worded Um, let me just pull it up.
Jason, while you're pulling that up. I'll just add, you know, there's a similar question on the Healthy Youth Survey, which we will also be giving a presentation about coming soon, you guys are noticing a springtime and summer trend. We, I asked Justin Nordhorn about like, where are they stealing it from, especially for youth under 21? How are they even getting into stores? And he reminded me about the hemp derived THC market that was thriving for some time in our state. And so when people answered that question, it is possible that they were thinking about sort of more readily available, not in the regulated market.
Great point. The other thing that I wondered about was able when people say I buy it in a store, you don't ask specifically a 502 store versus the neighborhood convenience store where they could be buying that stuff that Kristen was talking about?
And do people know I'm currently standing in a legal license store or not? That's something that I don't think we've done enough to explore. Jason, did you pull up that question?
Where did "I stole it from a store or dispensary." And so you know, obviously, again, with any survey research, there's always you're at the mercy of how someone interprets that. But we did see nonzero data for the first time in 2020.
i Yeah, I think, again, from our perspective of what we're trying to achieve, if more young people are getting it from non regulated stores, which tells us they're using the CBD and hemp derived THC things. That would be super important. Though, I'm pretty sure that's probably true.
Yeah.
It also brings up a great opportunity for us to partner with the industry to combat that. So I think it's an important point right there. Yeah,
I want to be mindful that it is a little over time. Thank you so much, Jason, for joining us. And thank you to the board. If you have follow up questions, feel free to reach out to me and I'd be happy to relay those to Jason.
Great
to work with you. And thanks for all you all do. And here's to a boring and uneventful end to the school year.
Yes.
Okay, take care. Bye.
super interesting. Yeah.
It's really interesting.
It's, you know, you got to tip your hat to the industry to on that youth usage thing they're doing okay, there. That's
well, and the reason I bring up that last point is because as I've had conversations with the industry, there are clear points where we can work together. And that most recent conversation that I had with somebody in the industry was about these unregulated products that are out there on the market that we all agree. And so I think that there's an opportunity for us.
Yeah, I think that unregulated stuff is the biggest threat right now. To the system in general, which is both the stability of the regulated industry, the health impacts, the youth access, if you can go into a convenience store and buy stuff that you don't know what's in it. You don't know how potent it is. And they don't have you know, it's not age checked at the door. That's
hey, I have an 11 o'clock. I'm a jump on. Yeah.
Any anything? Anybody to add? No. Okay. No caucus next week. We won't have a quorum. And with that, we're adjourned.
