A new leaf

MAT-SU — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday the federal government would stop prosecuting marijuana offenses that are illegal under federal law but allowed by state law.

While the news seems likely to have its greatest impact in California, the rule change will have at least minor implications here. In Alaska, possessing marijuana in your car, on the streets or in some other public space is illegal. But it’s such a low-level crime that police are at their own discretion whether to charge the crime if someone is found with weed.

“You stop a vehicle and it smells strongly of marijuana, you work it from there,” said Detective Sgt. Kelly Turney with the Palmer Police Department. “There’s been occasions when summonses have been issued and there have been cases where it’s been seized and destroyed and no summonses have been issued.”

Turney said that, like California, Alaska has a provision in state law to allow the medical use of marijuana. But, in his career, it hasn’t been an issue. He said that, in theory, folks can get a card that permits them to use medical marijuana.

“In 10 years I’ve never seen one,” he said.

But where it gets murky, he said, is on the question of in-home possession of marijuana. Turney said the laws are convoluted enough that he didn’t feel comfortable speaking as an expert on the topic.

Jon-Marc Petersen with the Denali Law Group is a former assistant district attorney. Now in private practice, he’s defending drug cases instead of prosecuting them.

He said the question of what’s legal in the home basically hinges on one seminal Alaska Supreme Court case — Ravin v. State. That case holds that possession of up to an ounce of marijuana or up to 25 plants is not a reason enough for police to enter someone’s home.

“Ravin kind of stands for the sense that you have a higher expectation of privacy in your own home,” he said.

He said that a strict reading of the law might say that it’s not actually legal in the state to possess any marijuana, just that it’s not OK for police to enter your home if they don’t have any reason to believe someone’s selling weed or if the amount they believe you possess isn’t more than an ounce or 25 plants.

But, in theory at least, this creates a gap between federal and state law. If a federal agency wanted to enter someone’s home and arrest him over a relatively small amount of marijuana, they could. Federal law doesn’t have the same exemption that’s been carved out in Alaska marijuana law.

But, Petersen said, theory is one thing, practice quite another. He’d be hard-pressed to come up with an instance in which federal agents decided to go after someone for an amount of marijuana that is, for all intents and purposes, legal to possess under state law.

“Technically you’re not supposed to, but they’re not going to come into your home and prosecute you,” he said. “That would be the function of the (Drug Enforcement Agency) anyway and I think they have like nine agents here.”

Holder’s order, though, would now seem to make that kind of action out of bounds.

Petersen said Alaska has another situation similar to the marijuana laws with weapons laws.

“It’s illegal for a felon to possess a firearm, but the state of Alaska has an exception for rifles and shotguns,” Petersen said. “It’s essentially so people can have a shotgun or a rifle for hunting purposes.”

But federal law doesn’t distinguish between types of guns. Felons can’t possess any firearms.

“According to the feds, if you’re a felon and you’re possessing a rifle that’s a violation of federal law. But essentially they don’t really prosecute it up here,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.