Local News

The Seattle Times political team explores national, state and local politics.

Copenhagen is looking at legalizing cannabis, as they call it, and Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes will be traveling to the Danish city to offer advice.

Officials in Copenhagen also are exploring the possibility of importing weed from Washington and Colorado, the two states that voted in November to allow legal recreational marijuana use.

According to the Copenhagen Post, city officials think importing Washington weed might be feasible, even though it appears illegal under international law and the U.S. federal government considers all forms of marijuana illegal. The feds already have expressed great concern about Washington’s legal pot leaking into other states; leaking into Denmark seems likely to bring them down on locals like a squatting hippopotamus.

“It’s not at all what we’re interested in doing. We’ve tried to do everything we can to devise a system that keeps our marijuana within our borders,” said David Postman, spokesman for Gov. Jay Inslee. Postman invited the Danes to import other Washington products, from apples to airplanes.

The Copenhagen City Council is holding a conference on cannabis legalization Friday. They’ve invited Holmes, a sponsor of Initiative 502, which enacted our legal pot law. A deputy mayor in Copenhagen said it “would be strange not to use the occasion to address practicalities with Mr. Holmes.”

Through his spokeswoman, Holmes said the state’s law would not allow exporting pot to Denmark. Copenhagen is paying for Holmes’ trip, according to spokeswoman Kimberly Mills, and no city funds will be spent on his visit.