LAWMAKERS TARGET REGULAR ALASKANS WITH ANTI-MARIJUANA BILL

It's about time someone formed a committee to investigate the
un-Alaska activities of our state politicians and hog-tie our governor
and Legislature for attempting to make it a felony for a person to
possess more than four ounces of marijuana with House Bill 149. Gov.
Murkowski has made criminalizing marijuana during his time in office a
personal goal.

Obviously, these fat cats don't realize Alaska is the land where
Democrats are NRA members and green-thumb Republicans hobby in
hydroponics.

We revel in contradiction and our uniqueness. We're the country's
largest state, yet we have fewer people than 47 other states. We're
home to one of the country's most lenient privacy policies aE" which
should protect us when we're smoking marijuana quietly at home aE" but
the Republicans in charge, whose ideology should have them govern with
a less-is-more approach, act like regulation-thirsty Democrats.

Heck, marijuana was legal until 1990 (within our lifetimes!) when
voters approved an initiative aE" later deemed unconstitutional aE" to
criminalize it.

House Bill 149 would criminalize personal-use amounts of marijuana
passed in the Alaska State House of Representatives May 8, after the
same bill was rejected April 19.

What changed?

The new bill claims that what you're smoking isn't your grandpa's
reefer.

This claim is based on findings that were refuted last year by
numerous scientific expert testimonies by UAF, Harvard and Oxford
researchers, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, a national
organization aiming to decriminalize weed.

The Alaska courts have consistently upheld the 1975 Alaska Supreme
Court ruling in Ravin v. State, which concluded that Alaskans
possessing four or fewer ounces of marijuana are protected from the
violation of privacy that enforcement of the proposed marijuana law
would entail.

Marijuana criminalization is all about a power trip. Most people
realize by now the health risks posed by marijuana pale in comparison
to those attending alcohol, which has been perfectly legal since
Americans acknowledged the destructive effects of Prohibition. Drives
toward ever-more restrictive marijuana laws aren't about marijuana as
much as they're about an authoritarian government muscling to push
people around.

Marijuana is part of the culture in Alaska. And it's big business,
too. In April, six Anchorage men we accused by federal prosecutors of
importing more than $10 million of marijuana into Alaska, reported the
Anchorage Daily News. Also, in the same month, the newspaper reported
Alaska State Troopers found a Bethel man with 42 pounds of the stuff
aE" worth about $940,000. And a Palmer father-son team was arrested
for growing 22 marijuana plants in a set up described by police as
intricate but not uncommon, according to the Anchorage Daily News. As
these recent arrests indicate, weed is an economic powerhouse here, so
if we're really a conservative state, we should put political stock in
laissez-faire economics.

And another thing. Criminalization of private marijuana use affects us
common folk differently from the way it affects the elites who made
this decision for us. Privacy, when stolen by the law, can always be
bought for a price. Large houses on spacious tracts of land naturally
afford a thicker wall of protection between a citizen enjoying a joint
in his living room and the prying eyes of neighbors and police. When
wealthy people and their kids get caught with illegal drugs, they
don't go to jail like the rest of us. They attend pretty rehab
programs instead.

Nice for them; crap for some of us.