Matt Driscoll: It’s long past time for the Pierce County Council to give up on a pot ban

At the risk of making a slightly outdated pop-culture reference, the Republicans on the Pierce County Council still desperately clinging to the idea that a pot ban is worth fighting for should listen to Elsa the Snow Queen.

It’s time to let it go.

Let it go.

Can’t hold it back anymore.

My kids — especially our 5-year-old son, August — love Disney’s “Frozen.” We listen to the soundtrack with excruciating regularity. The signature song, “Let It Go,” is on near-constant rotation in our minivan.

As a parent trapped within this endless obsession, it gets repetitive, tiresome and, after years of the same, painfully grating.

Luckily, I love my kids.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the Pierce County Council.

Repetitive, tiresome and grating are just a few of the adjectives one could use to describe some council members’ continued infatuation with barring pot sales in unincorporated Pierce County — no matter what the will of the people, or how much time and money they waste pushing their agenda.

The latest chapter in the county’s predictable pot plot took place Tuesday, when the council voted 4-3 — along party lines — to send Republican Joyce McDonald’s proposed ban on legal pot businesses to the county Planning Commission.

Though there are technical differences, McDonald’s ordinance basically seeks to reinstate a ban on marijuana operations that was undone late last year, when four of the seven members of the council — Democrats Connie Ladenburg, Rick Talbert, Derek Young and Republican Doug Richardson — voted to lift the ban on legal pot sales in the unincorporated parts of Pierce County, effective July 1.

If County Executive Pat McCarthy doesn’t veto McDonald’s latest anti-pot effort, it just might take effect. At some point. Thanks to foot-dragging and a “misunderstanding” that McDonald has blamed on council staff — a dubious contention, given her many years on the council and presumed familiarity with the job — by the time that happens it will essentially be too late.

July 1 will have come and gone. In fact, there’s a distinct possibility the Planning Commission won’t even take up the matter until July 26.

As The News Tribune’s Brynn Grimley has tirelessly reported, once Pierce County’s ban on recreational pot businesses goes away July 1, any would-be pot entrepreneur with a state license who has his or her application approved by the county hearing examiner and receives a conditional use permit will be allowed to open. And any business that does open will be allowed to stay open, as long as it follows state law and the law in place at the time the county approved its permit, regardless of whether McDonald’s new ban ever takes effect.

Several applicants are lined up and raring to go. The state Liquor and Cannabis Board has 17 licenses allocated for marijuana stores in Pierce County’s unincorporated areas, and it’s not outlandish to think at least a handful will have been claimed by the time McDonald’s new pot ban even makes it to the Planning Commission.

So why are we doing any of this? It’s a fair question, and one reasonable people have been asking throughout this ridiculous saga without receiving a satisfying answer.

First, the county wasted $425,000 on a meaningless, low-turnout advisory vote of just unincorporated areas of the county — cooked up to get an answer from voters who would support this continued pot crusade.

It didn’t work. Even Councilman Dan Roach, R-Bonney Lake, has said the election results are difficult to interpret. What’s clear, however, is that while 52 percent of the nearly 65,000 voters who bothered to participate in the April special election voted against legalized pot sales, it was far from the mandate needed to discredit the 54 percent of 341,000 voters countywide that approved legalized marijuana sales back in 2012.

Now we’re wasting everyone’s time and energy with an ordinance that, in reality, is all but pointless, even if it is eventually passed.

At best, it’s political showmanship.

At worst … well, I’ll let you choose the adjective this time.

Which, unfortunately, brings us back to Elsa the Snow Queen.

Sing it with me now, Pierce County Council:

Let it go. Let it go.

Can’t hold it back anymore.

This story was originally published June 18, 2016 at 2:35 PM with the headline "Matt Driscoll: It’s long past time for the Pierce County Council to give up on a pot ban."