This medical pot salesman could be jailed 35 years in Washington — where pot is legal

A medical marijuana controversy in Washington State
(Image credit: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

Medical and recreational marijuana is legal in Washington state — so why is Lance Gloor, who operated several medical pot dispensaries, facing 35 years in jail for his business?

Gloor's trial began on Friday and continues Monday in Tacoma, Washington. He's in court thanks to fuzzy legal language regulating medical sales in his state: At issue is the question of whether dispensaries like Gloor's broke the law when they sold the produce of multiple "collective gardens" of weed to qualified medical customers.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.