King County Executive Dow Constantine, Mayor of Seattle Mike McGinn, King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg, and Seattle City Attorney Peter Holmes have teamed up in a forceful letter sent today to Democratic and Republican party leaders in both houses of the state legislature to support a bill that would regulate medical marijuana dispensaries.

"In the absence of new legislation, we at the local level will have to choose between closing down dispensaries and prosecuting the owners and workers, or allowing them to continue to multiply in an unclear regulatory environment," write the four elected officials. "We need a new law stating that non-profit patient cooperatives are not illegal and giving us regulatory authority at the local level."

Read the entire letter.

The last-minute bill entered into the dwindling special session that ends next week, sponsored by state senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-36), attempts to fix a tangled mess of law left behind by Governor Chris Gregoire's partial veto of another medical marijuana bill earlier this year. But even with the support of city and county leaders, the bill remains controversial; medical marijuana activists say it would require them to file too much personal information with the state and ultimately ban dispensaries outside of Seattle.

The support of elected officials for the Kohl-Welles bill also seems to repudiate another medical-marijuana fixer bill filed last week by state representative Roger Goodman (D-45).