cannabisnews.com: Lawmakers Target Regular Alaskans 





Lawmakers Target Regular Alaskans 
Posted by CN Staff on May 23, 2006 at 11:31:30 PT
Editorial
Source: Northern Light
Alaska -- 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 – which should protect us when we're smoking marijuana quietly at home – 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 – later deemed unconstitutional – 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 – 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.Complete Title: Lawmakers Target Regular Alaskans with Anti-Marijuana BillSource: Northern Light (U of AK, Anchorage, Edu)Published: May 23, 2006Copyright: 2006 The Northern LightContact: opinion thenorthernlight.orgWebsite: http://www.thenorthernlight.orgRelated Articles:House OKs Drug Billhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread21828.shtmlHouse Passes Marijuana Bill http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread21824.shtml
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Comment #8 posted by afterburner on May 23, 2006 at 22:03:50 PT
Alaska: Stop Protecting Me!
US AK: PUB LTE: Stop Protecting Me.
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n660/a02.html
Pubdate: Tue, 23 May 2006.
Source: Anchorage Daily News (AK)
 Excerpt: "since we have now established that protection means McCarthy-esque fear mongering, invasion of privacy, control, manipulation, restriction, secret prisons, torture and destruction of personal freedom, integrity and individuality, you can keep it. Nobody needs that kind of protection. "
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Comment #7 posted by afterburner on May 23, 2006 at 18:46:27 PT
Nicely Said, global_warming
"it would be so nice if Republicans were true to their Conservative Tenets, instead of their Corporate Interests, and Democrats went back to the struggling working man, instead of large scale government hopelessly lost in bureaucratic confusion and corruption."
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Comment #6 posted by global_warming on May 23, 2006 at 15:35:29 PT
I Love Alaska
Sounds like they are going for the kill, Murkowski and who knows, next it might be that pee in the cup prophet Walters, it would be so nice if Republicans were true to their Conservative Tenets, instead of their Corporate Interests, and Democrats went back to the struggling working man, instead of large scale government hopelessly lost in bureaucratic confusion and corruption.
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on May 23, 2006 at 14:53:52 PT
Max Flowers 
He will get confirmed in my opinion. That's the way things go these days.
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Comment #4 posted by Max Flowers on May 23, 2006 at 14:50:40 PT
Hayden
This guy didn't/doesn't even know the full meaning of the 4th Amendment! Therefore it's unnerving that he will be in charge of CIA (if confirmed, and do we really doubt he will be?).
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on May 23, 2006 at 12:41:25 PT
Whig
Thanks. See how much I know. I have had the volume off the tv news so I read what they say and I'm probably totally wrong. I just keep playing music. 
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Comment #2 posted by whig on May 23, 2006 at 12:35:35 PT
FoM
I think he just got approved by the Intel. Cmte. Still has to be approved by the full Senate to be confirmed.
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on May 23, 2006 at 12:25:27 PT
Off Topic: Hayden Confirmed
I thought some here might want to know.
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