Pot issues gather steam at state, local levels

WASILLA — Local and state officials appeared to have marijuana on the brain this week.

Consumers in Palmer are still prohibited from smoke in public, but state laws hold sway for the moment. The city council voted 4-3 to postpone indefinitely ordinances pertaining to marijuana.

Passage of the ordinances, which would have banned smoking in public places and limited manufacturing to methods not involving potentially explosive substances, were postponed out of an abundance of caution, according to Linda Combs, who voted in favor of postponing them.

Combs said she spoke against postponing the legislation, but was persuaded to postpone them because of the fluid state of regulations at the state level.

“We didn’t want to pass legislation and then have to start over again or re-do them,” she said.

The state began seeking applications for the Marijuana Control Board Monday, and had received 35 applications, despite the fact that a bill establishing the board has yet to pass the Legislature.

As with the Mat-Su Borough marijuana advisory board — which recently not only filled each of 17 seats on a marijuana advisory board, but also appointed alternates for each position — interest has been high, according to Shalome Cederberg, the board and commission assistant in the Governor’s office in Anchorage.

“There’s definitely a heightened awareness and interest,” she said. “Part of it is to ferret out applications that you probably wouldn’t take real seriously to the ones that are more qualified and more serious.”

If Senate Bill 60 and its companion House Bill 175 pass as is, the board would consist of a member from the public safety sector, a member from the public health sector, a member from a rural area, and “not more than two people” active in the industry, according to a public notice seeking applications for the board.

Readers interested in applying to the board should send resumes to shalome.cederberg@alaska.gov.

Meanwhile, a marquee bill designed to re-shape state code to conform with Ballot Measure 2, passed in November 2014, was slated for a third reading in the Senate today.

A third reading has the potential to be the final version of the bill passed out of a particular house. Because the bill, Senate Bill 30, started in the Senate, it would need to be introduced in the House of Representatives and proceed through committee sessions and at least two more readings in the House of Representatives before being transmitted to the Governor’s office for a signature.

According to Proposition 2, officials must begin accepting license applications for marijuana-related businesses by November through either the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board or a separately established Marijuana Control Board. The current legislative session ends April 19, and the second session does not begin until January 2016, well after the Proposition 2-imposed deadline. Though a special legislative session could be called to deal with unfinished business beyond the 90-day session set by law.

Palmer elected officials aren’t the only ones waiting on the Legislature for guidance.

The District Attorney’s office is still accepting charges stemming from violations of the new marijuana code, but the full blown prosecution of such cases awaits decisions from lawmakers about whether or not they will be prosecuted as felonies, according to District Attorney Roman Kalytiak. Simple possession charges for marijuana have always taken a backseat to DUI and assaults in district court, and at the Superior Court level, marijuana cases are typically tried at the lower end, he said.

Possession trials require a lot of prosecutor time, and are more likely to end in suspended imposition of sentence than other types of misdemeanors or felonies, Kalytiak said.

“In other words, there’s not a lot of bang for the buck,” he said. “there are usually more serious cases we can apply our resources to than the marijuana cases.”

For example, Alaska State Troopers issued a misdemeanor citation Feb. 28 for underage possession to Clayton Thacker, 18, of Wasilla. Thacker is currently scheduled for an out-of-custody arraignment in April.

Without regulations in place marijuana offenses from Thacker’s case and others may end up being delayed until May, Kalytiak said. If the Legislature decides to make Thacker’s alleged crime into a felony, it may ultimately prove worth prosecuting. If the Legislature decides to make Thacker’s alleged crime into a violation (that’s the case with first-time minor consuming alcohol charges), it may follow a different course.

“Right now, we’ll probably refer it, and then we’ll screen it after the legislative session,” Kalytiak said. “If the Legislature puts it off until the next session, then we’ll have a bigger problem.”

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