Pro-Marijuana Group Targeting Alaska Laws

Marijuana Policy Project planning ballot initiative in 2014

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By Janessa Webb
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Story Created: Jan 17, 2013 at 6:25 PM AKDT

Story Updated: Jan 17, 2013 at 6:26 PM AKDT

ANCHORAGE - A national marijuana legalization group is targeting Alaska. The Marijuana Policy Project Group was instrumental in backing the Colorado's ballot measure that passed in November. The group says, with over 1,200 medical marijuana users registered with the state, support for weed has been greater in Alaska than anywhere else.

Back in 2004, 44 percent of Alaska voters supported a legalization ballot measure. The MPP hopes to help local supporters put the issue back before Alaskan voters by 2014 with a ballot initiative calling for the state to regulate and tax weed in the same manner as alcohol.

Mason Tvert, from the Marijuana Policy Project group, says, "It's just irrational to punish adults who are responsibly consuming a product that is far safer then one they can go currently purchase in the store. I think our currently policy of prohibition has utterly failed and its time for a new more sensible approach."

The group also plans to pursue recreational legalization of pot in six other states.

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Anonymous said on Thursday, Jan 17 at 7:21 PM

Marijuana was totaly legal here in Alaska until the early 1980s then Murky Frank got involved and made criminals out of a bunch of law abiding Alaskans. Lets just "SUNSET" all the pot laws

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Duncan20903 said on Friday, Jan 18 at 10:14 AM

The previous poster needs to get up to speed on the status of cannabis law in Alaska. Cannabis has never been "totally legal" under State law. In Ravin v State of Alaska the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that evidence of petty possession and petty cultivation cannabis law violations could not be used to convict because of the strong protection of the right to privacy in Alaska's State Constitution. In 1990 the State had a ballot initiative which purported to recriminalize cannabis despite that protection. In 2002 in Noy v State of Alaska the Alaska Court of Appeals struck down that unconstitutional law returning the State to having de facto legalization of petty possession and petty cultivation as defined in Ravin. The Alaska Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of that decision.

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