Alaska\u2019s Marijuana Control Board found its hands tied Thursday as it rejected the establishment of marijuana clubs.<\/p>\n
With clubs not covered by last year\u2019s voter-approved legalization law, board members reluctantly voted 3-1 in favor of a regulation banning them. If that prohibition is confirmed at the board\u2019s meeting in November, it would leave marijuana consumers with no legal place to use marijuana outside of private homes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was advocating for this type of business,\u201d board chairman Bruce Schulte said. \u201cUnfortunately, now with the benefit of a more detailed legal interpretation, we\u2019ve learned we can\u2019t craft those regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the Alaska Department of Law, the initiative legalizing recreational marijuana included mechanisms for the production and sale of marijuana, but it did not include protections for consumption outside the home. \u201cThis board does not have the authority to craft any regulation … unless it\u2019s authorized by statute,\u201d assistant attorney general Harriet Milks<\/span> told the board. \u201cThat\u2019s just the way it has to work.\u201d<\/p>\n The board\u2019s vote outraged supporters of a legalized marijuana industry. One offended person, listening in on the teleconferenced meeting, blasted a recorded message across the open telephone line for several minutes before board employees were able to mute the line.<\/p>\n Clubs\u2019 proponents say they are the marijuana equivalent of bars. The state contends that because sale and consumption cannot happen at the same location, clubs are closer to \u201cbottle clubs,\u201d which are banned under state law.<\/p>\n In the weeks before the board\u2019s two-day meeting began in Anchorage, it received dozens of written comments from Alaskans on the issue of clubs. All but two were in favor of their establishment.<\/p>\n Wes Schacht of Fritz Creek is a member of the Kachemak Cannabis Coalition and submitted one of those letters.<\/p>\n He has worked with cannabis clubs in British Columbia and said they are safe, regulated places. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like a \u2018Cheech and Chong\u2019 movie; it was regulated well,\u201d he said by phone after the vote.<\/p>\n In opposition was Peter Haeussler of Chugiak, who wrote that he worried that clubs would \u201cleave people in a state where they need or desire to travel after getting high.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis has been arguably the most popular and controversial section (of regulation) that we have looked at,\u201d said board member Brandon Emmett.<\/p>\n Emmett cast the sole vote against the ban. Board member Loren Jones, a member of the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly, abstained from the vote, citing a conflict of interest. The Assembly had sent a letter to the board asking for the opportunity to decide for itself whether clubs are located in Juneau.<\/p>\n Board members Peter Mlynarik, Mark Springer and Schulte voted in favor of the ban.<\/p>\n At Thursday night\u2019s Juneau Marijuana Committee meeting, Mitch Knottingham had short words to say about the decision.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s moronic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Ben Wilcox, speaking before Thursday\u2019s municipal meeting, said: \u201cIt\u2019s like anything else, people aren\u2019t going to not do it.\u201d He said he thinks it should be left up to municipalities to decide.<\/p>\n The ban was only one of several regulations examined by the state board before it concluded its work Thursday. Another contentious topic was the exact wording of warning labels that will be placed on marijuana products.<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as everybody\u2019s equally unhappy, then I think we\u2019ve nailed it,\u201d Schulte said at the close of the meeting.<\/p>\n The regulations approved Thursday must go through another round of public comment and board approval before they become final. A two-day hearing to collect public comment is scheduled for Oct. 15-16 in Anchorage.<\/p>\n Information from comments on those dates will be incorporated into a final draft to be considered by the board Nov. 20.<\/p>\n The voter-imposed deadline for completion of the regulations is four days later. The application process for the first retail marijuana licenses is expected to begin in February, and the first licenses may be issued as soon as May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alaska\u2019s Marijuana Control Board found its hands tied Thursday as it rejected the establishment of marijuana clubs. With clubs not covered by last year\u2019s voter-approved legalization law, board members reluctantly voted 3-1 in favor of a regulation banning them. If that prohibition is confirmed at the board\u2019s meeting in November, it would leave marijuana consumers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-7195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7195"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=7195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}