TEA AND HEMPATHY

Behind The Scenes With The Libertarians

Al Anders and I had been chatting for a few minutes when he pulled a box of
coca leaf tea from his desk drawer like a businessman in a movie offering
up a stashed flask of bourbon.

"You should try some of this. It's perfectly legal. You can get it off the
Internet," he said. "This is how cocaine would be consumed if it were legal."

I'd wandered into the Alaska Hemp office because I'd seen signs up all over
town advertising an Alaska Hemp/Libertarian Party convention in Juneau and
I was curious. Anders, a portly, mustachioed man who chairs Juneau's
chapters of Alaska Hemp and the Libertarian Party, welcomed me in, and was
in the process of explaining Libertarian philosophy.

Libertarians have championed many ideas over the years, among them the
capital move, flightseeing with dirigibles and the legalization of
marijuana. Famous Libertarians, I learned, include actress Dixie Carter,
and the lesser-known Mojo Nixon, who wrote the anthem, "I Ain't Gonna
(expletive) in No Jar."

"Vices are not crimes," Anders said as he poured the tea. "They may keep
you out of heaven, but they shouldn't put you in jail."

Libertarian brochures sat stacked on every surface. Hydroponic pot-growing
apparatus bubbled away in the front window. Anders was using it to grow
tomato starts. A partially nude woman gazed sullenly from a calendar hung
above his desk.

"Libertarians are individuals. Some are government minimalists; others are
anarchists," Anders said. They don't like taxes or any other government
intrusion into their private lives, he continued. Getting busted for
smoking pot in your house qualifies as an unnecessary intrusion, wherein
lies the connection between Juneau Libertarians and Alaska Hemp.

Pot has been illegal in Alaska for about a decade. Anders was behind an
initiative on the ballot in 2000 that would have legalized marijuana use by
adults age 18 and up, freed people jailed for marijuana-related crimes, and
possibly paid them restitution. Forty percent of voters that year - 114,000
people - voted in favor of it. He is at work on a new initiative that would
legalize marijuana for adult consumption. Assuming he can get it on the
ballot, he is optimistic about its chances, possibly in 2004.

"The spirit of individualism is huge in the Libertarian Party in Alaska,"
he said "That's why marijuana reform has its best chances here - we don't
really care how they do it Outside. ... One lump or two?"

The next evening Anders and Alaska Libertarian Party treasurer Len
Karpinski were dressed in suit coats, milling around a small conference
room at the Prospector Hotel. Officially, the convention was supposed to
start at 6 p.m., which was any minute. So far, there were no takers.

"At 6:15, I start panicking. At 6:20, I start drinking beer," Anders said.

Karpinski looked familiar. I asked if he'd run for public office.

"Al, did I run for state Senate before, or was it U.S. Senate?" He looked
at me apologetically. "Oh, I can't remember."

There were a dozen 22-year-old guys with long hair, a few older couples and
a terrier-poodle mix named "Sparkle" in attendance at about 6:15 p.m. when
keynote speaker Rob Kampia, director of the national Marijuana Policy
Project, took the floor. His suit made him look like an evangelical minister.

Kampia attributed national politicians' reluctance to take him seriously to
his theory that political staffers smoke pot, and have issues about it.
Still, the concepts of medical marijuana and lighter criminal penalties for
marijuana users have made some inroads, he said. Kampia and Anders had been
involved in a campaign for a marijuana legalization in Nevada last fall,
which tanked, something Kampia spent the rest of his talk explaining.

For one thing, stoned drivers recently killed an editor of the
second-largest newspaper in Nevada, as well as a police officer and six
teenagers picking up trash on the side of the road, he said. And the "Drug
Czar" ran ads about baked teenagers getting in car crashes.

"It was one of those emotional things," Kampia said. "We learned that we
have to be emotional about arrests. We have to show someone who lost their
kids, lost their house, ended up in jail, maybe got assaulted in jail and
now has AIDS."

Kampia said his polls have indicated Alaska is one of the most likely
states to legalize marijuana. The major group of voters that will help pass
initiative are 18 to 24, Kampia said. The college men in the audience, who
smelled suspiciously like a Phish concert, nodded at that, and I later saw
them leaving with fistfuls of literature. I asked one of them why he was there.

"I'm a registered party member. Basically I don't like anyone having a hand
in what we say and what we do," he said, and then paused for a minute.
"But, I don't know, I'm still sort of researching it."