STIRRING THE POT LAWS

Alaska's latest marijuana controversy doesn't involve nitpicking the
specifics of a search warrant or lofty arguments about how
constitutional privacy rights apply when an Alaskan gets caught
holding weed. Given the permissiveness of Alaska law, and the
efficient homegrown marketplace, the controversy may not even be
important in terms of an Alaskan's access to weed.

Instead, it's about media, medical marijuana and one man's access to
media.

Michael Smith is a Montana entrepreneur who complains that some Alaska
news media have rejected his advertisements. (He currently lives part
of the year in Arizona.) Smith's business in Alaska is called "The
Healing Center Medical Clinic," he's been placing modest
advertisements in the Anchorage Press. The ads announce clinic dates
in mid January. Smith has operated medical marijuana-related
businesses in Arizona, California and Montana, and says the Anchorage
Daily News and the newsy (or should that be truthy?) website Alaska
Dispatch have refused to take Smith's advertisements. (He has previous
experience with rejected ads in both Montana and Arizona.)

Smith says he doesn't plan to sell pot in Alaska. He says the only
plan is to bring a California doctor to Anchorage and allow customers
to pay a fee for a doctor visit. He says doctor/patient relationships
are important for sick people who think medical marijuana might help
them.

"I only focus on doctor relations. I'm here to help them maintain a
relationship with a doctor," Smith says. He claims the Alaska media
outlets either don't understand the service the clinic provides or are
scaredy-cats, afraid they could lose other advertisers if they accept
an ad from the medical marijuana industry.

Those claims couldn't be checked out at the Anchorage Daily News,
because publisher Patrick Doyle would not comment on the newspaper's
advertising sales policies. (He may have hung up before we could say
"Thank you"-so, thanks Pat!)

While Smith suggests he is being shut out of Alaska media outlets
because advertising departments are afraid they may lose other
clients, Tom Marriage, sales director at Alaska Dispatch, said the web
site turned down the ad for completely different reasons

The Dispatch rejected, Marriage said, "a small buy" from The Healing
Center, because the end of 2011 was approaching and his staff could
not devote resources to checking up on the clinic business. Marriage
said he wanted to research the company because it was a new account,
but time constraints prevented that.

"I honesty did not have enough time to look into a new company coming
in from out of state to open a clinic," Marriage told a Press by
voicemail. "With the minimum sized buy, it would have actually have
ended up costing the company in order to have the client on our site."

Smith plans to bring California ophthalmologist Dr. John McGroarty to
Anchorage in January. He said people responding to his ads have told
him they have trouble getting their Alaska physician to consider
medical marijuana as part of a treatment.

"The people who are calling me, they have been looking for a year or
two years to find a doctor," Smith says. Some Alaska doctors, he says,
"are either uneducated (about the law), or their morality is
preventing them from writing the prescription." He says because
marijuana-he prefers to call it "cannabis," saying "marijuana" is a
"derogatory" and post-prohibition word-is still illegal under federal
law, many doctors don't want anything to do with it.

Alaska's medical marijuana law requires patients to register with the
state to receive a medical marijuana card. The law requires the
"original" (no photocopies) signed statement of a physician that says
the patient has been diagnosed with a "qualifying condition" as listed
in the law.

Doctor/patient privacy being as important as it is, the State of
Alaska had to work some wiggle room into their list of qualifying
conditions. The short list includes cancer, glaucoma, HIV, and AIDS.
The wiggle room begins with a legal phrase "any chronic or
debilitating disease" that the doctor concludes is causing symptoms
such as cachexia (chronic weakness or wasting), severe pain, severe
nausea, seizures or muscle spasms. The law also includes a petitioning
procedure a patient and doctor can use to have "any other medical
condition" approved if the doctor and patient petition the state.

State records show Dr. McGroarty holds a temporary license in Alaska
that ends in April. Smith says that was necessary because the state
medical board does not meet often enough for McGroarty to receive a
permanent license with his first application.

Smith has a history in medical marijuana that includes growing and
providing cannabis to patients in his home state. He says he has no
plans to do that in Alaska. His take on Alaska is that card-carrying
patients should be able to get together to grow legally.

"The people I am going to help want to keep everything legal, and not
just legal under your Ravin decision" he said. "With the card, you can
drive around with it in your car and you can legally give it to
another patient-you can't sell it, but you can share."

His legal reference was to Ravin vs. Alaska, a 1975 Alaska Supreme
Court decision that famously made marijuana legal for personal use.
That decision has been upheld several times and remains the law-as
imperfect as it may be-of the land in Alaska. Trouble with Ravin is it
merely upholds the privacy rights of a person who has small amounts of
marijuana. It prevents cops from coming into a home because they
suspect there are small amounts of marijuana inside. It prevents a
judge from issuing a search warrant, even if the cop asking for a
warrant knows there is personal use of marijuana happening inside.

That's all it does. Alaska's marijuana prohibitionists have failed to
overturn Ravin, but they have successfully outlawed possession of pot
in public, transporting pot, selling any amount, growing for
commercial sale and even growing weed to give away unless the grow
operation complies with the medical marijuana law.

Smith's advertising problem, no matter what he says, isn't solidly
connected to marijuana prohibition. It may be connected to marijuana
stigma, but in this country media have a right to reject advertising.
In the earliest years of the United States, abolitionist newspapers
did not advertise slave auctions. In this century, some online
publications refuse to advertise guns or puppies for sale in their
classifieds. The newspaper you are holding your hands once refused an
ad from some neo-Nazis.

These are not examples of censorship. They are examples of choices
made by publishers exercising the right to free speech. As marijuana
use, especially under medical supervision, becomes destigmatized,
Smith may find that publishers-and their readers-are less concerned
about his message.