WILL POT 'GET LEGAL' IN ALASKA?

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — "Vote Yes Prop 5," proclaims the large yellow mural
painted on the side of a building here, complete with a large cannabis leaf.
A poster on the window offers a quote from Ronald Reagan, though he has
certainly not endorsed this particular measure: "Government exists to
protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is
in deciding to protect us from ourselves."

And just inside the door here at the headquarters of Free Hemp in Alaska are
more than a dozen versions of pamphlets offering reasons for Alaskans to
support the broadest marijuana legalization initiative ever to appear on a
state ballot.

One pamphlet proclaims that marijuana is a far safer drug than alcohol;
another says that passage of the measure would "free police resources to
fight real crime."

And a third, "Marijuana and the Bible," has drawings of Jesus Christ and
observes: "Nowhere in the Bible does it forbid people to grow, use or smoke
cannabis hemp."

Here in a state that many Alaskans like to describe as the most libertarian
in the nation, voters are being asked in the Nov. 7 election to say "yes" to
marijuana in a single, sweeping vote that would not only legalize
consumption of the drug for anyone age 18 and over but also create automatic
amnesty for anyone convicted of marijuana-related charges and even require
the state to consider restitution for such people.

Supporters of Proposition 5 are visible all over Anchorage, holding up
roadside banners, handing out the leaflets, displaying stickers on their car
bumpers. They gathered signatures from more than 41,000 registered voters to
get the measure on the ballot, more than twice the needed number and a
figure that represents nearly 10 percent of all voters in the state. And if
marijuana users are derided by drug critics as laid-back and apathetic, the
frenetic energy that many are bringing to the cause belies that image.

"It's a travesty that we lock people up and make criminals of them for
personal use of marijuana," said James Garhart, a 51-year-old messenger who
says he has used marijuana on a "semi-daily" basis for years and is now
spending almost all of his free time working for the Yes-on-5 campaign.

Some opponents of the measure fear that it will pass because, they say,
supporters are running a campaign that appeals to Alaskans' libertarian,
leave-me-alone instincts and that often refrains from using the word
"marijuana." The leading organizations for the measure have names like "Free
Hemp in Alaska" and "Hemp 2000." Hemp is a different variety of the plant
species Cannibis sativa that has many industrial uses and a tiny fraction of
the psychoactive properties of marijuana.

"I'm concerned that the word is not getting out about what this measure
would do," said Wev Shea, the U.S. attorney here during the Bush
administration and now a lawyer in private practice, who is a leading critic
of the measure.

The measure has plenty of prominent critics, including Gov. Tony Knowles, a
Democrat who calls it "foolish and dangerous," and Chief Duane Udland of the
Anchorage police, who has warned that the measure could create a "drug
culture" that would attract wayward elements from all over the world.

Of 518 residents surveyed in the last 10 days of September, 42 percent said
they were "strongly against" the measure and 19 percent "generally against,"
while 35 percent indicated they were supporting it.

Alaskans voted two years ago to legalize the medicinal use of marijuana, and
Dittman said there might be strong support for decriminalizing the drug in
some fashion because the state electorate did indeed have libertarian
tendencies.

"There's certainly an element of that in the Alaskan mentality, but it does
not extend to amnesty, to restitution, to the idea that marijuana would all
of a sudden be legal for teenagers," Dittman said. "I think that's where
they went too far."