Whether to Put a Lid on Pot Splits Alaskans

A couple of times a week, Frank Turney comes home from work, sits down and casually lights up a joint.

“I don’t drink any more,” said Turney, a 44-year-old construction laborer from Fairbanks. “I just have a smoke.”

What would be a criminal act almost anywhere else in America is perfectly legal in Alaska. Fifteen years ago, the state Supreme Court ruled that Alaskans have the right to possess and grow small amounts of marijuana in their homes, and state legislators later decided that citizens could legally have up to four ounces of it.

But now, spurred on by the war on drugs in other parts of the country, Alaskans are engaged in a heated fight over whether the permissive law is a good idea. Voters will decide next week whether to repeal America’s most liberal pot law and make possession of any amount of marijuana a crime punishable by up to 90 days in jail.

The campaign has led to a loud debate over citizens’ right to privacy versus what backers of the measure, including parents’ groups and conservative politicians, insist is growing medical evidence that pot smoking is bad for you.

“A lot of parents really think this law is sending the wrong message to our youth,” said Alyce Hanley, a Republican state representative from Anchorage who is among those leading the push for recriminalization. “We’ve deceived our young people--we’ve told them there’s nothing wrong with it.”

Alaskans on the other side of the issue note that it is already illegal for anyone under 18 to use pot and illegal for anyone to possess it in public or to sell or barter it. They accuse the other side of distorting the health risks and say alcohol and drugs such as cocaine cause far greater problems here.

“I really don’t think that the founding fathers thought our Constitution and our laws were meant to be for message-sending--you can do that with an advertisement,” said Glenda Straube, head of Alaskans for Privacy, a group formed to fight the initiative.

Two years ago, a study by the University of Alaska reported that marijuana use among high school students in Anchorage had dropped during the 1980s but was still 16% above the national average. A study by the local school district showed that, during the same period, cocaine use by teen-agers had declined dramatically to well below national rates.

No one is sure how many adults in Alaska smoke marijuana, but the number is thought to be at least as high as in other parts of the country. In the Matanuska Valley north of Anchorage, long known as the state’s agriculture center, marijuana has become such a big, though illicit, crop that authorities have been debating whether to tax it as a farm product.

Turney, the laborer, recently ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Fairbanks and noted that four of the five candidates admitted having used marijuana.

“It’s accepted more here, I think,” he said.

The marijuana referendum has drawn considerable interest outside of the state. William J. Bennett, the national drug policy director, toured Alaska last week, campaigning for recriminalization.

He invited Alaskans to join the rest of the country in the fight against illegal drugs and suggested in a speech in Anchorage that the existing law, if not changed, will lure “individuals who don’t like what is going on in the other 49 to come to Alaska to smoke marijuana . . . . You will increase the population of people who want to get into the drug culture . . . .”

Alaska’s pot vote has become a top priority for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which has contributed nearly $20,000 to Alaskans for Privacy. The group is spending the money on commercials urging independent-minded Alaskans to “just say no” to government intrusion.

Eleven other states, and some local areas, have reduced the penalties for marijuana possession, but Alaska is the only place where small amounts are legal in the home. Alaska is technically at odds with federal law, which bans possession of any amount, but federal law is rarely enforced here, except at the Canadian border or when marijuana is found in the mail.

Alaska’s law grew out of a far-reaching constitutional amendment, overwhelmingly approved by voters in 1972, guaranteeing citizens’ rights to privacy.

In a unanimous decision in 1975, the state Supreme Court ruled that marijuana was such a relatively non-harmful substance that the privacy provision permitted adults to possess it in private. In later cases, the court refused to extend the same right to cocaine, ruling it is so dangerous that users should face criminal penalties no matter where they are caught.

Opponents say that, if the marijuana initiative is approved, they will challenge it in court.

Retiring Gov. Steve Cowper recently announced his support of the initiative, even though, he said, most lawyers he knows were advising him that it probably would not withstand a court challenge.