SEATTLE — Five years after Washington launched its pioneering legal marijuana market, officials are proposing an overhaul of the state’s industry rules, with plans for boosting minority ownership of pot businesses, paving the way for home deliveries of medical cannabis and letting the smallest growers increase the size of their operations to become more competitive.

Liquor and Cannabis Board Director Rick Garza detailed the proposals — part of what the board calls “Cannabis 2.0” — in an interview with The Associated Press. It’s an effort to picture what the legal marijuana market will look like over the next five years, after spending the past five years largely regulating by reaction as the difficulties of building an industry from infancy absorbed the agency’s attention.

“We’ve typically been so challenged with the issues of the day we haven’t been looking out long-term to determine what the future looks like,” Garza said.

The board has been freeing up its bandwidth by coordinating with other agencies to share the responsibility of regulating the market, such as having the Department of Ecology oversee the certification of marijuana testing labs and the Department of Financial Institutions examine the sometimes complicated ownership structures of licensed cannabis businesses.

One big-picture issue the board could rethink is whether to abandon the state’s seed-to-sale marijuana tracking program, [Read More @ The Washington Post]