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Alaska's marijuana reformers are back, this time offering a wholesale legalization of the drug in a state once known as the most permissive in the nation when it comes to smoking pot. Last week the group called Campaign to Regulate Marijuana cleared its first hurdle with an approval from Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell to circulate a petition and put the legalization of pot on the August 2014 primary election ballot. If the petitioners are successful, voters will be asked to pass a seven-page law that legalizes and regulates the production, sale and possession of marijuana on a footing somewhat similar to alcohol.
"The idea of this initiative is to treat alcohol and marijuana about the same," said Bill Parker, one of the initiative's sponsors and a former member of the Alaska State House who debated marijuana policy in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Parker is retired from the Alaska Department of Corrections. He was deputy commissioner of Corrections in the 1990s. He believes marijuana is less harmful than alcohol and that marijuana prohibition is expensive and impractical. "There are probably a couple hundred thousand people in this state who know, firsthand, something about marijuana. I don't know if the campaign changes them or not, but we are going to see," Parker said.
The organizers believe Alaska voters will follow a trend of states that have decriminalized marijuana. But few of those states have a history similar to Alaska's, where courts decriminalized pot and the political system pushed back to re-criminalize it. Parker sounds optimistic despite the history. "I have got to believe that it is soaking in, bit by bit, that the war on drugs does not work," Parker said. "It is time to stop ignoring the elephant in the room."
The proposed law would allow local communities to opt-out of various levels of legalization. A city or borough could prohibit growing marijuana, manufacturing products from the plant or operating retail sales within local boundaries. A community could limit hours of sale and it could pass those prohibitions by ordinance or by voter initiative. Parker said the authors wanted a local option to protect the rights of communities that prohibit alcohol.
"Because they have a right to opt-out on alcohol, we thought we would extend that to them for marijuana," Parker said, adding he is not sure if alcohol prohibitions work.
"Does it work? I don't know, frankly. Prohibition on any level is pretty tough, but I guess a town that wants to be dry would probably want to be marijuana-free, too. I guess if we want to treat it like alcohol we have to take the bitter with the sweet," Parker said.
Alcohol prohibitions are common in rural Alaska, where many villages have opted to go dry. Even in Anchorage, the bars and liquor stores close earlier than the state-required last call at 5 a.m. But the proposed legalization of pot would not allow a community to ban smoking the plant entirely. That's because Alaska courts have consistently ruled in favor of privacy when it comes to small amounts of marijuana in the home, for use by an adult.
State criminal statutes say otherwise, but the statutes have not changed significantly since a 2003 court decision said that outright prohibition of marijuana is not enforceable under the Alaska Constitution. In a case called Noy v. State, the Alaska Court of Appeals wrote that, "Alaska citizens have the right to posses less than four ounces of marijuana in their homes for personal use." The decision referenced the landmark 1975 Alaska Supreme Court opinion called Ravin v. State, in which possession of "a small amount" of marijuana in a person's home was protected.
The Appeals Court, in the 2003 Noy opinion, limited enforcement of Alaska's marijuana prohibition. The judges explained in the opinion that even though Alaska voters criminalized marijuana by initiative, they didn't have the power to make an unconstitutional law. The power of the initiative process is equal to that of the legislative process, no more and no less. The Appeals court wrote: "just as the statutes enacted through the normal legislative process must not violate the constitution, the statutes enacted by ballot initiative must not violate the constitution."
Jason Brandeis, a lawyer and professor at University of Alaska Justice Center, said the ruling reinforced what he called "the Ravin doctrine," which limits how far the state can intrude into the private lives of adults. Cops don't get search warrants in Alaska based solely on evidence of personal use in a home–it takes evidence of a commercial pot farm or other serious crime.
"Ravin, and the other cases, don't really allow for a way or means for you to procure marijuana other than growing it yourself," Brandeis said. "If you leave your home or travel outside your home you are not protected within the bubble of Ravin anymore."
In a 2012 paper for Alaska Law Review, Brandeis wrote that the somewhat confusing state of Alaska marijuana law is similar to a "dead letter law"–a law that stays on the books after the courts have ruled it unconstitutional. There is one important difference with Alaska's prohibition of pot. The prohibition was passed, by voters and later by the Alaska Legislature, after the courts said the right to privacy was more important than the state's need to ban marijuana. Brandeis has represented marijuana advocates in the past, but says his paper for the law review was academic and he tried to approach it in an objective fashion.
"Marijuana law has a number of moving pieces," Brandeis said. "But when you talk about privacy, the state can only reach into your life so far."
The current initiative offers broad legalization that would put many arguments about privacy aside. Pot would be legal for adults, but not legal to smoke in public. The state could enforce rules against unlicensed sales or illegal manufacturing of, say, cookies or caramels laced with pot, but Alaska law would be on par with the law in Washington and Colorado. Voters in those two states approved recreational marijuana in 2012. So far, Colorado is ahead in terms of announcing regulations. Sixteen other states have either decriminalized marijuana or allowed its use if prescribed by a doctor.
The legalization initiative would not allow people to smoke marijuana in public. It would require anyone transporting a small amount to keep it sealed and hidden from view. It also leaves intact the prohibition against driving while stoned. It would require the state to create a marijuana control board to regulate and license production and sales. Alternatively, the state could enlist the current Alcoholic Beverage Control Board to do that job. The initiative also includes an excise tax. Commercial growers would collect $50 per ounce when marijuana is sold to a manufacturer or retailer. If the state doesn't enact regulations–which seems likely given Alaska's history of conflicting pot laws–local communities would be allowed to move forward and regulate marijuana by ordinance.
The initiative has yet to attract organized opposition, but there is little doubt it will. Between 1990 and 2004, Alaskans voted on marijuana law four times and in most cases campaigns were hard fought and ended with prohibition reinforced or preserved by healthy margins. One exception was a 1998 election in which voters passed a medical marijuana law that allows patients with a doctor's prescription to possess the drug. In some states, card-carrying medical marijuana patients can purchase the drug at licensed shops. Alaska has no such system. Here, patients must grow their own pot or have it provided by a designated caregiver.
The initiative would certainly make it easier for registered medical patients to access the drug. "If there are no restrictions on anybody, than certainly medical users will have better access," said Tim Hinterberger, another sponsor of the initiative. Hinterberger is a University of Alaska professor who teaches anatomical science to medical students and conducts research in molecular biology.
Hinterberger smokes pot, he says, "in small amounts," and has been interested in marijuana reform since he was a teenager. He was involved in a failed 2004 legalization campaign.
"I've always thought that our drug laws, especially for cannabis, were just a bad idea," Hinterberger said. "For most people who try cannabis it is the only illegal drug that they ever use. So really, for most people, it's not a gateway but an ending point for their drug experimentation."
He suggested legalization could help prevent the use of more dangerous drugs, because pot smokers would no longer have to buy their drug on a black market. "It seems likely that if it were made legal it would reduce the interaction of cannabis users with vendors of other illegal substances," Hinterberger said.
The sponsors say they looked at Alaska alcohol laws and recent marijuana reforms in other states. They also tout a poll conducted by the firm Public Policy Polling that showed 54 percent of Alaska voters polled either strongly support or "somewhat support" legal marijuana for adults when sold by state-licensed dealers. The New York Times has described Public Policy Polling as a company that conducts polls "for liberal and Democratic clients," while conservative web sites have attacked the firm and accused it of having a liberal bias. The company has tracked bizarre questions, such as an approval rating of God and asking if hipsters should be taxed for being annoying. It also conducts a media trustworthiness poll.
Mason Tvert, communications director of the national group Marijuana Policy Project, said Public Policy Polling has delivered consistently accurate polls on marijuana issues. Tvert was involved in a 2005 local initiative in Denver that removed all city penalties for marijuana. Colorado voters turned down a similar statewide initiative in 2006, Tvert said. Some local governments voted to make marijuana their lowest priority for police over the next couple of years. In 2012, Colorado legalized pot for recreational use statewide.
The numbers from the pollsters and at elections go in one direction, Tvert said. "Up–Always up, up, up. We have heard of the voter fatigue concept, but I think it is a lot easier for insiders or folks in the media to get fatigued about a policy issue," he said. "When you think of it from the perspective of the voter, it's once a year and one policy question. I guess it's just not that much to get fatigued about."
Colorado and Washington are both working on regulations for recreational marijuana sales. Colorado seems to be ahead on that front, it has a marijuana tax division within its department of revenue and retail dispensaries for medical marijuana patients. In May, regulations for recreational pot sales were unveiled in Colorado and retail trade could start in January 2014. The federal government has taken a hands-off approach to medical marijuana dispensaries in recent years. It's unclear how the U.S. Department of Justice will react to legal recreational marijuana in those two states. Alaska could get a preview of how conflicting federal and state laws are reconciled–if they are reconciled–before they are asked to vote on the issue.
Tvert, said prohibitionists in Colorado argued the new law would make marijuana too accessible. He dismisses that wholesale–pot is already easy to obtain, he says. "Some might argue that we are going to be the least permissive state, because it is going to be more controlled," he said. "It will be treated like any other product for adults that is regulated and controlled." He said there have been few, if any, negative results of the vote last fall.
For Tvert the vote to legalize warranted a victory lap. He delivered some light-hearted gloating with a dash of sarcasm in an interview with the Press. "You know I've got to wash the sky off my car every day," Tvert said. "It just keeps falling."
News Hawk- Truth Seeker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: anchoragepress.com
Author: Scott Christiansen
Contact: editor@anchoragepress.com
Website: Pot is back in Alaska politics - Anchorage Press: Anchorage Press News
"The idea of this initiative is to treat alcohol and marijuana about the same," said Bill Parker, one of the initiative's sponsors and a former member of the Alaska State House who debated marijuana policy in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Parker is retired from the Alaska Department of Corrections. He was deputy commissioner of Corrections in the 1990s. He believes marijuana is less harmful than alcohol and that marijuana prohibition is expensive and impractical. "There are probably a couple hundred thousand people in this state who know, firsthand, something about marijuana. I don't know if the campaign changes them or not, but we are going to see," Parker said.
The organizers believe Alaska voters will follow a trend of states that have decriminalized marijuana. But few of those states have a history similar to Alaska's, where courts decriminalized pot and the political system pushed back to re-criminalize it. Parker sounds optimistic despite the history. "I have got to believe that it is soaking in, bit by bit, that the war on drugs does not work," Parker said. "It is time to stop ignoring the elephant in the room."
The proposed law would allow local communities to opt-out of various levels of legalization. A city or borough could prohibit growing marijuana, manufacturing products from the plant or operating retail sales within local boundaries. A community could limit hours of sale and it could pass those prohibitions by ordinance or by voter initiative. Parker said the authors wanted a local option to protect the rights of communities that prohibit alcohol.
"Because they have a right to opt-out on alcohol, we thought we would extend that to them for marijuana," Parker said, adding he is not sure if alcohol prohibitions work.
"Does it work? I don't know, frankly. Prohibition on any level is pretty tough, but I guess a town that wants to be dry would probably want to be marijuana-free, too. I guess if we want to treat it like alcohol we have to take the bitter with the sweet," Parker said.
Alcohol prohibitions are common in rural Alaska, where many villages have opted to go dry. Even in Anchorage, the bars and liquor stores close earlier than the state-required last call at 5 a.m. But the proposed legalization of pot would not allow a community to ban smoking the plant entirely. That's because Alaska courts have consistently ruled in favor of privacy when it comes to small amounts of marijuana in the home, for use by an adult.
State criminal statutes say otherwise, but the statutes have not changed significantly since a 2003 court decision said that outright prohibition of marijuana is not enforceable under the Alaska Constitution. In a case called Noy v. State, the Alaska Court of Appeals wrote that, "Alaska citizens have the right to posses less than four ounces of marijuana in their homes for personal use." The decision referenced the landmark 1975 Alaska Supreme Court opinion called Ravin v. State, in which possession of "a small amount" of marijuana in a person's home was protected.
The Appeals Court, in the 2003 Noy opinion, limited enforcement of Alaska's marijuana prohibition. The judges explained in the opinion that even though Alaska voters criminalized marijuana by initiative, they didn't have the power to make an unconstitutional law. The power of the initiative process is equal to that of the legislative process, no more and no less. The Appeals court wrote: "just as the statutes enacted through the normal legislative process must not violate the constitution, the statutes enacted by ballot initiative must not violate the constitution."
Jason Brandeis, a lawyer and professor at University of Alaska Justice Center, said the ruling reinforced what he called "the Ravin doctrine," which limits how far the state can intrude into the private lives of adults. Cops don't get search warrants in Alaska based solely on evidence of personal use in a home–it takes evidence of a commercial pot farm or other serious crime.
"Ravin, and the other cases, don't really allow for a way or means for you to procure marijuana other than growing it yourself," Brandeis said. "If you leave your home or travel outside your home you are not protected within the bubble of Ravin anymore."
In a 2012 paper for Alaska Law Review, Brandeis wrote that the somewhat confusing state of Alaska marijuana law is similar to a "dead letter law"–a law that stays on the books after the courts have ruled it unconstitutional. There is one important difference with Alaska's prohibition of pot. The prohibition was passed, by voters and later by the Alaska Legislature, after the courts said the right to privacy was more important than the state's need to ban marijuana. Brandeis has represented marijuana advocates in the past, but says his paper for the law review was academic and he tried to approach it in an objective fashion.
"Marijuana law has a number of moving pieces," Brandeis said. "But when you talk about privacy, the state can only reach into your life so far."
The current initiative offers broad legalization that would put many arguments about privacy aside. Pot would be legal for adults, but not legal to smoke in public. The state could enforce rules against unlicensed sales or illegal manufacturing of, say, cookies or caramels laced with pot, but Alaska law would be on par with the law in Washington and Colorado. Voters in those two states approved recreational marijuana in 2012. So far, Colorado is ahead in terms of announcing regulations. Sixteen other states have either decriminalized marijuana or allowed its use if prescribed by a doctor.
The legalization initiative would not allow people to smoke marijuana in public. It would require anyone transporting a small amount to keep it sealed and hidden from view. It also leaves intact the prohibition against driving while stoned. It would require the state to create a marijuana control board to regulate and license production and sales. Alternatively, the state could enlist the current Alcoholic Beverage Control Board to do that job. The initiative also includes an excise tax. Commercial growers would collect $50 per ounce when marijuana is sold to a manufacturer or retailer. If the state doesn't enact regulations–which seems likely given Alaska's history of conflicting pot laws–local communities would be allowed to move forward and regulate marijuana by ordinance.
The initiative has yet to attract organized opposition, but there is little doubt it will. Between 1990 and 2004, Alaskans voted on marijuana law four times and in most cases campaigns were hard fought and ended with prohibition reinforced or preserved by healthy margins. One exception was a 1998 election in which voters passed a medical marijuana law that allows patients with a doctor's prescription to possess the drug. In some states, card-carrying medical marijuana patients can purchase the drug at licensed shops. Alaska has no such system. Here, patients must grow their own pot or have it provided by a designated caregiver.
The initiative would certainly make it easier for registered medical patients to access the drug. "If there are no restrictions on anybody, than certainly medical users will have better access," said Tim Hinterberger, another sponsor of the initiative. Hinterberger is a University of Alaska professor who teaches anatomical science to medical students and conducts research in molecular biology.
Hinterberger smokes pot, he says, "in small amounts," and has been interested in marijuana reform since he was a teenager. He was involved in a failed 2004 legalization campaign.
"I've always thought that our drug laws, especially for cannabis, were just a bad idea," Hinterberger said. "For most people who try cannabis it is the only illegal drug that they ever use. So really, for most people, it's not a gateway but an ending point for their drug experimentation."
He suggested legalization could help prevent the use of more dangerous drugs, because pot smokers would no longer have to buy their drug on a black market. "It seems likely that if it were made legal it would reduce the interaction of cannabis users with vendors of other illegal substances," Hinterberger said.
The sponsors say they looked at Alaska alcohol laws and recent marijuana reforms in other states. They also tout a poll conducted by the firm Public Policy Polling that showed 54 percent of Alaska voters polled either strongly support or "somewhat support" legal marijuana for adults when sold by state-licensed dealers. The New York Times has described Public Policy Polling as a company that conducts polls "for liberal and Democratic clients," while conservative web sites have attacked the firm and accused it of having a liberal bias. The company has tracked bizarre questions, such as an approval rating of God and asking if hipsters should be taxed for being annoying. It also conducts a media trustworthiness poll.
Mason Tvert, communications director of the national group Marijuana Policy Project, said Public Policy Polling has delivered consistently accurate polls on marijuana issues. Tvert was involved in a 2005 local initiative in Denver that removed all city penalties for marijuana. Colorado voters turned down a similar statewide initiative in 2006, Tvert said. Some local governments voted to make marijuana their lowest priority for police over the next couple of years. In 2012, Colorado legalized pot for recreational use statewide.
The numbers from the pollsters and at elections go in one direction, Tvert said. "Up–Always up, up, up. We have heard of the voter fatigue concept, but I think it is a lot easier for insiders or folks in the media to get fatigued about a policy issue," he said. "When you think of it from the perspective of the voter, it's once a year and one policy question. I guess it's just not that much to get fatigued about."
Colorado and Washington are both working on regulations for recreational marijuana sales. Colorado seems to be ahead on that front, it has a marijuana tax division within its department of revenue and retail dispensaries for medical marijuana patients. In May, regulations for recreational pot sales were unveiled in Colorado and retail trade could start in January 2014. The federal government has taken a hands-off approach to medical marijuana dispensaries in recent years. It's unclear how the U.S. Department of Justice will react to legal recreational marijuana in those two states. Alaska could get a preview of how conflicting federal and state laws are reconciled–if they are reconciled–before they are asked to vote on the issue.
Tvert, said prohibitionists in Colorado argued the new law would make marijuana too accessible. He dismisses that wholesale–pot is already easy to obtain, he says. "Some might argue that we are going to be the least permissive state, because it is going to be more controlled," he said. "It will be treated like any other product for adults that is regulated and controlled." He said there have been few, if any, negative results of the vote last fall.
For Tvert the vote to legalize warranted a victory lap. He delivered some light-hearted gloating with a dash of sarcasm in an interview with the Press. "You know I've got to wash the sky off my car every day," Tvert said. "It just keeps falling."
News Hawk- Truth Seeker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: anchoragepress.com
Author: Scott Christiansen
Contact: editor@anchoragepress.com
Website: Pot is back in Alaska politics - Anchorage Press: Anchorage Press News
