Washington Initiative 692 (1998)

Background: the 1996–1998 medical cannabis wave

California's Proposition 215 passed in November 1996, creating the first state-level medical cannabis law in the United States.^[1] Activists in other Western states moved quickly. In Washington, an earlier initiative — I-685, a broader drug-policy measure modeled partly on Arizona's Proposition 200 — appeared on the November 1997 ballot and was defeated, with about 60% voting no.^[2]

Organizers regrouped under the name Washington Citizens for Medical Rights and drafted a narrower successor focused strictly on medical use of cannabis. That measure became Initiative 692. The campaign was backed financially by the same national donors active in other 1990s drug-policy reform efforts, including financier George Soros, Peter Lewis of Progressive Insurance, and University of Phoenix founder John Sperling.^[3]

What I-692 actually said

The full text of I-692 was codified as Chapter 69.51A of the Revised Code of Washington (RCW), titled the Medical Use of Marijuana Act.^[4]

Key provisions as enacted in 1998:

• Qualifying conditions were enumerated: cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy or other seizure disorders, glaucoma, intractable pain, and certain other 'terminal or debilitating' conditions. The state Department of Health was authorized to add conditions later.^[4]
• Authorization, not prescription. A licensed physician had to provide 'valid documentation' that the patient might benefit from medical use. Federal law barred actual prescriptions, so the statute used the term authorization.^[4]
• Sixty-day supply. Patients or their designated 'primary caregiver' could possess a 60-day supply for personal medical use. The initiative itself did not define that amount in grams or plants; quantification came later by Department of Health rule.^[4]
• Affirmative defense, not immunity. A qualifying patient who was arrested could raise medical use as an affirmative defense at trial. Police were not required to decline arrest, and the burden of proof sat with the patient.^[4][5]
• No dispensaries. I-692 created no licensed retail system, no registry, and no commercial supply chain. Patients had to grow their own or rely on a single caregiver.^[4]

This structure is important for understanding later disputes: virtually every familiar feature of 'medical marijuana in Washington' — collective gardens, storefronts, the patient registry, plant counts — was added by later legislation, not by I-692 itself.^[6][7]

Campaign and 1998 vote

The Yes on 692 campaign emphasized seriously ill patients — cancer and AIDS patients in particular — and explicitly distinguished itself from the broader, defeated I-685. Public endorsements came from the Washington State Medical Association's leadership being officially neutral, and from a range of hospice and HIV/AIDS care providers.^[3][8]

Opposition was led by law enforcement organizations, including the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, and by then–U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey's office, which campaigned against medical cannabis initiatives nationally during this period.^[8]

On November 3, 1998, I-692 passed with roughly 59% in favor.^[9] Washington thereby became the second U.S. state with a functioning medical cannabis statute, alongside Oregon (Measure 67), Alaska (Measure 8), and Nevada (Question 9), which also passed medical measures that same election.^[1]

Implementation problems, 1999–2010

Because I-692 provided only an affirmative defense, patients were routinely arrested, had medicine seized, and had to litigate their status case by case. Washington appellate decisions through the 2000s repeatedly addressed who qualified, what counted as 'valid documentation,' and how the 60-day supply rule should be applied.^[5][6]

In 2008, the Department of Health adopted a presumptive 60-day supply rule of 24 ounces of usable cannabis and up to 15 plants — a number that itself drew litigation.^[6]

The legislature substantially rewrote the medical program in 2007 (SB 6032) and again in 2011 (SB 5073). SB 5073 attempted to create licensed dispensaries and a patient registry; Governor Christine Gregoire vetoed most of the licensing sections, citing federal preemption concerns after U.S. Attorneys threatened state employees with prosecution. What survived authorized 'collective gardens,' which became the legal fig leaf for the gray-market dispensaries that proliferated in Seattle and other cities from 2011 onward.^[7]

Fate after I-502 and SB 5052

Voters approved Initiative 502 in November 2012, legalizing adult-use cannabis. I-502 did not repeal I-692, but it set the stage for tension between an unregulated medical market and a heavily taxed and tested recreational one.^[10]

In 2015, the legislature passed SB 5052, the Cannabis Patient Protection Act, which folded medical sales into the recreational licensing system run by the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board, created a voluntary patient database, and shut down the collective garden model effective July 1, 2016.^[11] After that date, most of the operational machinery that patients and journalists called 'the I-692 system' no longer existed in its original form, though the underlying RCW 69.51A authorization framework remains in force.^[4]

Common myths

Myth: I-692 created medical dispensaries in Washington. Disputed It did not. The initiative authorized personal possession and a single designated caregiver. Storefront access came from the 2011 collective garden provisions and informal local tolerance, not from I-692.^[4][7]

Myth: I-692 made medical cannabis 'legal' in Washington. Disputed Strictly speaking, it created an affirmative defense to a criminal charge. Qualifying patients could still be arrested and prosecuted, and many were, throughout the 2000s.^[5]

Myth: Washington was the first medical cannabis state. No data California's Proposition 215 preceded I-692 by two years. Washington was part of the 1998 second wave alongside Oregon, Alaska, and Nevada.^[1]

Myth: The 60-day supply was always 24 ounces and 15 plants. Weak / limited Those numbers came from a 2008 Department of Health rulemaking, not from the 1998 initiative text, which left the quantity undefined.^[6]

Sources

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Related

• Washington Initiative 502 (2012) — The Washington State ballot measure that, alongside Colorado's Amendment 64, made adult-us...