Pot-smokers’ dream state

Press, 16 February 1984, Page 8

Pot-smokers’ dream state

By

MURIEL DOBBIN

4 of

the Baltimore “Sun" (through NZPA) Anchorage Only in Alaska can you sit at home and smoke marijuana secure in the knowledge that you are breaking a national law, but that you will not be prosecuted. The Alaska Supreme Court nine years ago gave a ruling which means that marijuana can be smoked in the home, despite the Federal law. And nine years on, most observers in Alaska say, marijuana smoking is not now the problem. But the police are very worried about an increasing use of hard drugs. The Last Frontier, as it is known in the United States, cherishes its privacy and defends its independence against meddling from what Alaskans refer to disdainfully as “the outside."

And it was on the basis of a Constitutional right to privacy that the state’s .ffigh court made its controversial

ruling, holding that, “the state has traditionally been the home of people who prize their individuality and who have chosen to live here in order to achieve a measure of control of their own life-styles which is virtually unattainable in many of our sister states.”

, In practical terms it means that marijuana can be smoked by adults possessing up to 4 ounces (113 g It is still a Federal offence, but since the high court ruling, there have been no Federal prosecutions involving private possession of small amounts of the drug. The unprecedented ruling of the state’s high court has by no means put an end to prosecution for marijuana possession or dealing in Alaska. Under legislation approved two years ago it became a crime punishable by a Fine of SUSIOOO (51540) and up to three months in jail to smoke a joint of marijuana in public. It is a violation punishable by a fine of up to JUSIOO ($154)

to hand a marijuana cigarette to someone else in your home, though as one lawman said, that provision was unrealistic in enforcement. Last month there were indications that Alaska’s demonstration of judicial independence still rankles with the Federal Government. A State Department specialist in international narcotics said in a visit to Anchorage that Alaska’s permissive attitude was impeding Federal programmes in other nations where questions were asked about American protectionism towards its own marijuana growers. An editorial in the “Anchorage Times” said that “the revelation that this state is undermining the (Federal) foreign programme is shameful and an embarrassment and should shock its people.”

But one Alaskan law enforcement officer says: “As far as I am concerned, this situation has freed police to concentrate on the really serious fr*fug problems of

Alaska.” Alaska’s chief prosecutor, Daniel Hickey, says that after an initial upswing in marijuana use it seems to have levelled off in the decade since the high court’s decision. Before the legislature’s tightening of state drug laws, he said, there had been problems interpreting the important words: “a small amount for personal use.” Mr Hickey recalled a case in which occupants of a commune had been arrested for growing 230 marijuana plants producing about 201 b (about 9kg) of the drug a year. “The defendants insisted they were cultivating the drug for their own use — sort of stocking up for the winter, you might say. And the jury acquitted them,” be said.'

Such a verdict now would be unlikely under a legal framework that is more specific about how much is too much.

Robert Sandberg, the State’s Director of Public Safety, says that he woqjd

like to see the marijuana decision changed. He acknowledges that he had been wrong when he predicted that the high court ruling would, “open the door to condoning the use of marijuana and perhaps loosen laws relating to other drugs.” “That has not happened,” he says.

State law enforcement officials agree that cocaine is the main drug problem in Alaska. Drug arrests last year rose almost 50 per cent over 1981.

A 1983 report by the state’s drug enforcement programme showed a dramatic increase in enforcement over the last three years, reflecting a narcotics problem keeping pace with and possibly outpacing the expanding population. All of which, as one police official said, had made the marijuana ruling “pretty small potatoes, when the state is confronted with organised dealing in cocaine, amphetamines, and hashish.