I DON'T LIKE POT LAWS

I want my police getting violent criminals off the street, not chasing
marijuana users.

The Alaska Public Defender Agency says that half of the 500
marijuana-related misdemeanors they handle a year would be felonies
under a proposed new state law. These new laws will fill Alaska
prisons with hundreds of nonviolent offenders.

Marijuana's felony status will divert police resources from fighting
violent crimes, which we can't afford. Alaska has six times the
national average of reported child sexual assaults and 2.4 times the
national average of reported rapes. However, in Anchorage alone,
police fail to investigate almost 25 percent of rapes and about 40
percent of crimes against children.

If Murkowski wants to amend the constitution, he shouldn't try to do
it behind our backs.

The Alaska Supreme Court has held that Alaskans' constitutionally-guaranteed
right to privacy in the home extends to adult possession of up to four
ounces of marijuana.

Toward the end of the state senate hearing on March 23, several
witnesses opposed to S.B. 74 were allowed to testify, including
Barbara Brink, the director of the Alaska Public Defender Agency. As
she finished, Senator Gary Wilken of Fairbanks attacked her presence,
stating that he was "shocked" and "disappointed" that she would
testify against the bill in her official capacity. What is "shocking"
and "disappointing" is that neither Senator Wilken nor the rest of the
committee offered the same criticism of the parade of uniformed law
enforcement officers who testified in their official capacities for
S.B. 74 over two days.

Supporters of S.B. 74 and H.B. 96 argue that marijuana is harmful
because people arrested for other crimes have had marijuana in their
system, and impoverished Alaskans have high marijuana usage-rates. But
these points mistake correlation for causation. Marijuana use by
impoverished Alaskans does not indicate that marijuana made them
impoverished, nor does marijuana use by criminals imply that it made
them commit crimes.

Supporters of S.B. 74 and H.B. 96 argue that marijuana is more potent
now than it used to be; therefore, it's more dangerous. First, they
offered no legitimate proof for this. Second, potent marijuana doesn't
equal dangerous marijuana. If anything, people who use more potent
marijuana need to use less of it - this means they ingest less smoke,
tar, and other irritants.

Eric Friend

Anchorage