Oregon has been a trailblazer on marijuana policy since becoming the first state to decriminalize personal possession back in 1973. Much progress continues to be made, not without some serious complications, but the state is slowly but surely moving towards a day when no one is sentenced to jail for cannabis. One of the fears that many cannabis community members have of legalizing and regulating marijuana is that the new rules could provide the state with more ammunition to arrest people for minor offenses.

Thus far, while no one is pleased with every development, the state hasn’t used new regulations to arrest people and it is good to hear from the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) that they want the state regulatory system to be compliance-based not enforced with violence. Nathan Rix, policy analyst for the OLCC, explained to the IT blog GCN:

“What we’re trying to do is create an atmosphere where you can come into our regulated system and it will feel much more like an IRS audit than a SWAT team because we want you in the regulated market,” Rix said. That is sometimes a tough sell, he said, when you have people who are used to avoiding rather than complying with the law.

The key to getting people into the regulated market, Rix said, is their first experience with filing an application to apply for a license to sell, grow, produce, process or lab test marijuana. The second experience involves the use of radio frequency ID (RFID) tags that track the product. And the third is with the OLCC staff when they look at a grower’s inventory, Rix said.

Since the passage of Measure 91 legalized marijuana at the November 2014 ballot box, the Oregon Legislature has further reduced most marijuana felonies, passed landmark retroactive expungement laws and the state has seen a dramatic decrease in the number of people arrested and cited for marijuana. While ending the arrest and imprisonment of the cannabis community is the ultimate goal of legalization, changes in regulations can be maddening and the state will continually be tweaking the laws in the foreseeable future as different problems arise and the some laws may have unintended consequences.

Changes in marijuana law certainly complicate the plight of the cannabis community and industry, but also the lives of regulators tasked to do the job. Two companies hired by the OLCC to handle regulatory issues, NIC and Franwell, were partially selected because of their willingness to roll with modifications to the law, according to GCN:

One of the major challenges OLCC faced when trying to get a solid system up and running was the state’s changing policies while it sorted out exactly how regulation of a new business would work — a problem most states with some form of legalized marijuana are facing. OLCC said it hired NIC and Franwell because they were very willing to develop a system while laws were still being made.

For many in the Oregon cannabis community, the medical system was working just fine for them, so it is understandable to be frustrated with change, but it is necessary that those in the industry adapt to the changes. The OLCC has held seminars across the state and events like the upcoming Oregon Marijuana Business Conference (that we help organize) help keep the cannabis community informed.

Across the board, it has to be recognized that ending a vast majority of arrests, citations and jailings is positive for the entire state. The state just needs to continue to listen to the community, particularly the patients and providers that have been the foundation of Oregon’s medical marijuana law.

It is great to see the state move from a law enforcement mindset to a compliance mindset as the IRS model is preferred to the SWAT model, but Oregonians should remain vigilant so that the IRS model becomes the DMV model (wait, is that an improvement?) to a model that is easily accessible to mom-and-pops and Oregon’s cannabis system follows in the footsteps of the local microbrewery and winery systems that have flourished in the state. When Oregon has a system that easily brings in everyone, then the state can create jobs, generate millions in revenue and take care of sick and disabled patients as well.