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Oregon Marijuana Regulators Request Funding To Develop Rules

Oregon voters could choose whether to legalize marijuana next year.
National Institute on Drug Abuse
Oregon voters could choose whether to legalize marijuana next year.

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission could get a more than $500,000 injection of emergency funds to help oversee the legalization of recreational marijuana.

That’s because starting next year, the OLCC won't be controlling just liquor anymore. Voters gave it the job of regulating pot, too.

Legal marijuana sales likely won't begin until early 2016. But the OLCC is about to embark on a lengthy rulemaking process for how marijuana can be grown and sold in the state. The agency wants to hire four new people right off the bat, with more to come next year.

On Monday, a legislative panel that considers emergency requests will consider a staff recommendation to give the Commission nearly $600,000. The state estimates that eventually, taxes on legal pot will cover the cost of administering the program.

Copyright 2014 Northwest News Network

Chris Lehman
Chris Lehman graduated from Temple University with a journalism degree in 1997. He landed his first job less than a month later, producing arts stories for Red River Public Radio in Shreveport, Louisiana. Three years later he headed north to DeKalb, Illinois, where he worked as a reporter and announcer for NPR–affiliate WNIJ–FM. In 2006 he headed west to become the Salem Correspondent for the Northwest News Network.