Voters approved ballot measure two last night. The measure makes legal the production, sale and use of marijuana for Alaskans over 21 years old. Washington DC and Oregon approved similar measures.
Today, supporters laid out the plan for how the initiative will move forward. 90 days after the vote results are certified, the initiative becomes law and marijuana use will no longer be a crime. A nine month rule making process follows.
Campaign spokesman Taylor Bickford says this nine-month process will enable Alaskans on both sides of the legalization campaign an opportunity to weigh in on how the law should be implemented. Bickford says that will help Alaska avoid making mistakes that other states, like Washington, may have made when they wrote rules on the front end of their legalization push.
“We’ll have more flexibility in coming in to those decisions. Which I think ultimately is good because we’ll have the ability to learn from what’s happening in those states over the course of the next year as opposed to if we had all of that written in at the beginning of the initiative, there would have been less flexibility, you would have been stuck with some of those decisions,” Bickford said. “It also gives Alaskans from various stakeholder groups, the opportunity to engage in the process and to have a role in the process and I think that’s going to be incredibly important.”
Bruce Schulte with the Coalition for Responsible Cannabis Legislation said CRCL is a group of Alaskan business leaders from across Alaska who see the new law as the start of a legitimate industry.
“Just as the name would imply, the goal really is to work with the legislature and their control board and all of the other various groups on the rule making process, so at the end of the rule making period, we’ve got a set of rules that make sense, that address all the concerns that folks have and allow a legitimate marijuana industry to thrive in the state,” Schulte said.
Bickford says if the state does not set it’s own regulations within the nine-month window, regulatory authority would then be transferred to municipalities to implement the measure as they see fit.
Lori Townsend is the news director and senior host for Alaska Public Media. You can send her news tips and program ideas for Talk of Alaska and Alaska Insight at ltownsend@alaskapublic.org or call 907-550-8452.
