Alaska Becomes Fourth State to Legalize Marijuana

Yesterday
Alaska became the fourth state to legalize marijuana for
recreational use. With 74 percent of precincts reporting, 52
percent of voters favored legalization. Alaska joins
Oregon and
Washington, D.C., which legalized marijuana on the same day,
and Colorado and Washington state, where voters approved
legalization in 2012.

Alaska has taken a unique approach to marijuana since 1975, when
the Alaska Supreme Court decided that
the state constitution’s privacy clause allows people to possess
small amounts of cannabis at home for personal use without fear of
arrest or punishment. But that ruling raised an obvious question:
Where are people supposed to get the pot they are allowed to
use?

Measure
2 answers that question with a system similar to Colorado’s.
It allows adults 21 or older to possess up to an ounce of
marijuana at a time, grow up to six plants at home, and transfer up
to an ounce at a time to other adults “without remuneration.” It
authorizes state-licensed growers, cannabis product manufacturers,
and retailers, to be regulated by Alaska’s Alcoholic Beverage
Control Board or a separate agency created by the state
legislature.

Alaska’s tax will be $50 per ounce, collected from growers. From
the government’s perspective, the advantage of that approach, which
is similar to the way alcohol is taxed (by volume),  is that
proceeds from a given quantity of marijuana remain the same as
prices drop, which is what will happen as the market develops
unless something goes terribly wrong. The disadvantage, from a
social engineer’s perspective, is that a tax based on weight does
not take potency into account (unlike alcohol taxes, which fall
more heavily on liquor than on beer). In fact, a weight tax might
encourage higher potency, especially as it becomes a larger and
larger component of the retail price. If production costs
fall as
expected, Alaska’s weight tax could amount to a rate of 100
percent or more within a few years, giving consumers an even bigger
incentive to buy the strongest pot they can find.

Measure 2 prohibits marijuana consumption “in public,” making it
“a violation punishable by a fine of up to $100.” The initiative
does not define “in public,” but that language probably will
prevent people from legally consuming marijuana in any setting
other than their homes. As
in Colorado, the effort to keep cannabis consumption hidden
will make enjoying the newly legal product especially problematic
for visitors.

Like Oregon’s initiative, Alaska’s does not change the state’s
DUID rules. Under current
law, blood test results can be used as evidence that someone
was driving “while under the influence of” marijuana, but they are
not necessarily conclusive. Alaska does not have a “per se”
standard like Washington’s, which makes drivers automatically
guilty of DUID when the amount of THC in their blood exceeds a
specified level.