SALEM — State legislators are moving toward consolidating the state’s medical and recreational marijuana industries into one regulatory system.

The co-chairwomen of the Joint Committee on Marijuana Regulation have dropped several bills that would move regulation of medical marijuana from the Oregon Health Authority to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, the regulatory agency for recreational sales of the drug. Another proposal would establish a separate agency specifically for cannabis regulation.

OHA has regulated the medical marijuana program since it was created through Ballot Measure 67 in 1998. When voters legalized recreational cannabis use with Measure 91 in 2014, regulation of the new program was assigned to the liquor commission, while the health authority retained its oversight of the medical program.

Health authority officials from the beginning were reluctant overseers, said Tom Burns, a marijuana policy consultant and former health authority administrator.

The Oregon Health Authority’s tardy and ill-conceived rollout of rules and dedication of resources to the program was an “unmitigated disaster,” Burns said.

In time, it became apparent that two separate systems made little or no sense because of OHA’s disinterest in regulating the program, he said.

“The medical suppliers, growers and patients said let us get it out of OHA to somebody who does want it and will work with us to make a program that works for us,” Burns said. [Read more at East Oregonian]