Joint judiciary committee pauses pot bills pending re-draft

JUNEAU — Members of a joint legislative judiciary committee Wednesday canceled hearings to consider Alaska’s marijuana laws that had been scheduled for Friday afternoon.

Members said Senate Bill 30 and House Bill 59 would instead be rewritten to address concerns about legal defense, enforcement mechanisms, and popular approval of the bill, according to Alaska Sen. Lesil McGuire (R-Anchorage) and Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux (R-Anchorage).

“We’re not going to do anything more with these bills, other than hear the testimony from people today, until these bills come back from legislative drafting in a form that we feel reflects the will of the people,” LeDoux said.

In general, legislators struggled Wednesday to reconcile various sources of law pertaining to marijuana legislation, ranging from the 1976 Alaska Supreme Court Decision Ravin v. state of Alaska (which found that health risks posed by marijuana use of certain amounts did not pose sufficient public risk to override the state constitutional right to privacy), a 1982 law passed to match that decision with the letter of the law, allowing for four ounces and up to 24 plants (subsequently overturned by another ballot initiative during the Murkowski administration), and Ballot Measure 2, passed in November 2014 by a 15 percent statewide margin, which allows possession of up to an ounce and six plants.

The two bills drew intense scrutiny because they offered legal defenses for certain behaviors without allowing straight-up legality for marijuana. That’s because while the ballot initiative legalized certain circumstances, others remain illegal, Hillary Martin of the Legislative Legal Department said in testimony Monday. For example, it remains illegal to possess more than one ounce or to give marijuana to someone younger than 21 years old, Martin told the joint committee.

“What I did was, to try and solve some of the differences between the initiative and the current criminal statutes involving misconduct involving a controlled substance, was to keep that same structure so you can prosecute people who are not acting within the bounds of the initiative and then create this defense to prosecution,” she said. “In creating the defense, I used language from the initiative.”

The ballot measure has been the subject of local discussion since its passage.

Palmer Mayor DeLena Johnson has said a previously enacted smoking ban also would prevent smoking marijuana in public places, which are rigorously defined within the law. Other regions of Southcentral, like the Kenai Peninsula Borough and the Municipality of Anchorage, have considered or are considering prohibiting the drug altogether.

The borough also has unanimously passed two resolutions related to the ballot measure. One resolution established a committee to look into potential upsides and pitfalls arising from personal legalization — effective Feb. 26 at the latest — and commercialization. The other asked for clarification of specific measures, based largely around public feedback given at a forum involving the mayors of the borough, Houston, Palmer, and Wasilla, as well as borough staff.

That second resolution, the only such document so far submitted to the House of Representatives, came up in discussion, and several questions in it were put to various state officials. For example, does standing on the edge of private property and smoking constitute smoking in public? Officials referred those questions to the state definition of public property as defined in Alaska state statutes.

Issues concerning regulation and enforcement also surfaced Wednesday. The initiative establishes the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board under the Department of Community and Economic Development as the body regulating marijuana, or allows for the establishment of a separate marijuana control board to regulate the industry.

The board would need to expand membership in order for it to effectively regulate marijuana, according to board director Cynthia Franklin. The board currently employs 10 people, and only five work with enforcement issues relating to alcohol, Franklin said. The state presently has 1,800 liquor licenses.

“We don’t have marijuana regulators waiting in a closet somewhere … to be brought out and placed on this board,” she quipped.

The ballot initiative leaves the door open for three approaches: expanding the board’s operations within the department to accommodate marijuana regulation, moving regulation along with enforcement to a board established under a different department, or forming two separate boards but keeping them within Economic Development, Franklin said. The Walker administration favored the last approach, Franklin said.

McGuire said the committee would balance technical detail with the general tone of the ballot initiative.

“There’s been a healthy debate in this building about whether the issue of a licensing board needs to be addressed,” she said. “Some people believe by default it doesn’t need to be discussed. Some people would like to see it addressed. I believe it’s the Legislature’s responsibility to act and be clear about what board would have it and what that authority will be.”

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com.