Alaska Re-Criminalizes Marijuana

On Friday, Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski (R) signed a bill that has
re-criminalized marijuana in the state.

Even though political observers originally expected the bill to pass within
weeks of its introduction in early 2005, many months of lobbying and grassroots
organizing by MPP, the ACLU of Alaska, and Alaskans for Marijuana Regulation and
Control succeeded in blocking the bill for one-and-a-half years. However, an
intense lobbying campaign by the governor and state attorney general, which
included personal phone calls to waffling legislators, ultimately tilted the
vote.

The new law, which makes it a crime to possess any amount of marijuana in the
privacy of one's home, directly contradicts a September 2004 Alaska Supreme
Court ruling allowing adults aged 21 and older to use and possess up to four
ounces of marijuana in the privacy of their homes. (The MPP grants program
funded this litigation.) The ACLU plans to challenge the new, blatantly
unconstitutional law in court.

Although we lost our lobbying battle, we have much to show for the past 1.5
years of work. We demonstrated that we have a serious political operation in
Alaska, including a database of almost 60,000 people whom we have identified as
being supportive, which will be crucial if we run a ballot initiative to tax and
regulate marijuana in Alaska in November 2008.

We also now have polling that shows we can win such an initiative campaign,
because 56% of Alaskans now say that possession of small amounts of marijuana
should be legal ... indicating that the media coverage we generated made major
inroads in changing people's attitudes toward marijuana policy. (Visit
www.mpp.org/AK/news/index.mpp to see a listing of this media coverage.)

All of these things give us a solid foundation to tax and regulate marijuana in
the state in 2008.

However, MPP is about $60,000 in the hole because of the substantial financial
support we provided to Alaskans for Marijuana Regulation and Control to (1) run
radio ads criticizing the bill, (2) generate calls from thousands of Alaska
voters to their legislators, (3) retain the former deputy commissioner of
corrections to lobby full time against the bill, and (4) conduct public opinion
polling.

We spent the $60,000 because it was the right thing to do, and I'd be grateful
for any help you can provide to assist us in recovering financially from this
battle. Please visit
www.kintera.org/site/lookup.asp?c=hjJZJgMOIoE&b=980423&msource=5046 to
contribute today.

Thank you,

Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.

 

im not reading all that, but if the title is true; how shitty.

 

From what I've read, the recriminalization measure was tacked on with a measure to prohibit the sail of large quantities of cold medicine to combat the uprising meth problem. So basically, they just tacked on the rescriminalization of marijuana to a bill they knew would be mostly supported. Sort of an "the end justifies the means" type of thing.

It's a shame, really. Oh well, the time is coming; more and more people everyday are growing tired of cannabis prohibtion.

 

smokescreening is total bullshit--i hate this government.

 

I was gonna move up there too

 

YAY FREEDOM!!!!

Fuck this country, I'm so sick of this bullshit. Friend of mine just got back from Prague where she and anyone else could smoke pot freely on the street. Walking through the Common in Boston yesterday there's an undercover pig frisking some guy because he had a J and small bag or something, two minutes later there's a cruiser with two pigs and a piggy on a bike. What a load of shit.

There's one state in this country that actually allows its citizens some element of privacy, but that's obviously too good for these fucking authoritarian 'leaders'. This shit blows....