Palmer, Houston to revist marijuana issue

HOUSTON — Voters in Houston will join those in Palmer to decide whether or not marijuana will be commercially available in local stores this fall.

Voters in both communities voted to approve statewide Ballot Measure Two, which legalized the drug in 2014. Houston was the community that voted to approve marijuana by the widest margin of local municipalities: 14 percent. In Palmer, voters gave less full-throated support, approving legalization by a four-percent margin.

The resolutions voters in each town will face are identical, essentially banning marijuana cultivation facilities, manufacturing facilities, testing facilities and retail stores within city limits. The sponsor of the latest measure, Houston resident Scott Thompson, says his petition was provided by a political group formed after Ballot Measure Two passed last fall, and coordinated by borough mayor Larry DeVilbiss, who also faces re-election at the same time. DeVilbiss appears as a secondary sponsor for the Palmer measure.

“There was a coalition to ban commercialization in the borough,” Thompson said. “I don’t think anybody thought the ballot would ever pass to begin with. There was a legal group who formulated the wording.”

That group provided sample copies for the proposed ordinances, Thompson said.

A similar measure for borough residents outside of incorporated cities has until September to obtain enough signatures, but that measure will not appear on the Oct. 6 ballot.

Marijuana use in Alaska is already legal for adults 21 and older, and the idea of the ban is to take advantage of sections of Ballot Measure Two, Thompson said.

Commercialization “is the only focus, because the other part of the law is already in place,” he said. “Every city and community in the state is given the opportunity to ban it from their community by popular vote.”

Thompson repeated a common argument made in support of the bans, that while alcohol is legal, it’s not without harm. To allow commercialization would invite additional social ills, Thompson said.

“It’s destructive,” he said. “It’s destructive to families, it’s destructive to individuals, it medically has impacts on young people’s minds and their cognitive reasoning and it does not have a productive benefit to society.”

Thompson, a prison chaplain with Alaska Correctional Ministries, says he sees the social ills firsthand through his work.

“I don’t drink, but I work in an institution where a huge percentage of the people that are in that institution are in that institution because of alcohol related issues, crimes,” he said. “Therefore, I think they are related.

“Introducing marijuana and making it legal does not justify the damage that’s going to come out of it, just like alcohol and alcoholism are huge problems in the villages and the community as a whole,” Thompson added. “I don’t know how we can justify marijuana just because alcohol’s legal.”

Wasilla, the sole Mat-Su city to reject legalization in the Fall 2014 vote, has officially rejected the coalition’s measure, which had been sponsored by Eugene Larmi and Milton Michener. City ordinance prohibits a ballot initiative on a subject where the city council has passed a similar ordinance, and clerk Kristie Smithers ruled that ordinances adopted in March that had allowed concentrates for personal use (after a brief period when they were outlawed), was “substantially the same,” according to a letter.

“The descriptive title and Proposed Summary of Initiative are further misleading as they both reference specific business that will be banned, but do not define those businesses or include references to the specific businesses in any of the language amending the current Ordinance,” Smithers wrote. “The title is not accurate or descriptive of how the suggested ordinance would change the code.”

Clarification: This story was updated on August 24 to reflect the fact that DeVilbiss is a secondary sponsor of the Palmer measure. The original story did not specify which measure for which the borough mayor was a secondary sponsor.

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