Pubdate: Thu, 24 Apr 2014
Source: Anchorage Press (AK)
Copyright: 2014 Anchorage Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.anchoragepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3078
Author: Scott Christiansen

POT PROHIBITIONISTS ENGAGE IN LEGALIZATION BATTLE

Two important things happened last week in the Alaska marijuana 
debate. The first was the arrival of a campaign to stop the 
legalization of recreational pot, led by Deborah Williams, a former 
chairwoman of the Alaska Democratic Party. The second important thing 
is the marijuana initiative has been moved from the August primary 
election to the statewide general election to be held Tuesday, 
November 4. That gives first-time voters about 11 weeks more time to 
register to vote.

Williams said the move gives her newly-formed campaign more time to 
get their anti-legalization message out. It's a relatively complex 
message, involving Alaska law, the influence of advertising on 
children and teens and advances in marijuana delivery systems that 
put the squares on edge. Just like the initiative proponents, the 
vote no camp has hired paid political consultants who have begun to 
distill their message into slogans. Expect them to promote 
drug-demonizing catch phrases such as "Big Marijuana" and try to turn 
voters on to stories from the Lower 48, especially Colorado, about 
highly intoxicating hash-oil products they warn could become more 
available if the law is passed.

"Most Alaskans when they think about marijuana think about green 
leafy matter, but this definition makes it very clear that [the word] 
marijuana, when it appears in the law, is meant to be as broad and 
inclusive as possible," Williams said, pointing to the definitions 
section of the law voters could pass. "It explicitly includes highly 
concentrated marijuana products like 'shatter' and 'crumble' and 'ear 
wax' and butane hash oil. We just want Alaskans to understand that 
that is what this definition includes."

The initiative's proponents said the legalization of recreational pot 
would bring regulations to a currently unregulated, black market 
industry. Their law would require the state to set up a marijuana 
regulatory board and the Alaska Legislature would have ultimate 
authority over the regulations. Both Washington and Colorado, the two 
states that have legalized recreational marijuana, took more than a 
year to adopt regulations for retail sales. (Washington voters 
adopted a legal weed law in 2012, but retail sales are not expected 
there until July.)

"People shouldn't be misled into believing that anything that happens 
here is going to be just like what is going on in Colorado," said Tim 
Hinterberger, one of the original sponsors of the initiative. "We can 
learn from what we see going on in Colorado and we can improve on it. 
If our Legislature hands it over to this mythical Big Marijuana, 
whoever they are, then we would have the Legislature to blame for it 
- - but I don't expect that to happen."

The marijuana reformers have consistently tried to frame the debate 
in terms of alcohol. They named their organization's web site 
"Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol in Alaska" and last week 
issued a provocative challenge after the vote no camp announced its 
presence: the pro-pot campaign would donate $9,015 to Williams's vote 
no effort if the vote no camp could prove marijuana was more 
dangerous than alcohol. Williams responded with a press release 
calling the offer "a stunt" and a distraction from the real issues of 
the debate.

"The bad effects of alcohol don't lessen the effects of marijuana, 
especially the many marijuana concentrates - such as 'shatter' and 
butane hash oil - that will become prevalent and advertised," 
Williams said in the prepared statement. Williams suggested 
proponents of the initiative donate money instead to one of the many 
organizations in Alaska that deals with substance abuse and youth.

"If this passes," Williams said, "those organizations are going to 
need every penny they can get."

Williams said Alaska would see a flood of advertising for new 
products if recreational pot is legalized. She shared with the Press 
a printed version of a slide presentation she has been giving. One 
side includes pictures of brightly colored bottles with cartoon 
character logos and names such as "Doc Weed" and "Grape Ape" that 
Williams warned are specifically designed to appeal to children.

Williams, in the 1980s, was director of the Alaska branch of the 
American Lung Association during a time when tobacco companies were 
being accused of creating child-friendly advertising to ensure future 
tobacco users. She said the pictures she sees from Colorado - she had 
a newspaper ad with a cartoon joint offering 99-cent joints - remind 
her of that battle with the tobacco companies.

"We are vulnerable our whole lives, but we are more vulnerable in our 
teenage years," Williams said, pointing to pictures of old tobacco 
ads and new marijuana ads. "As troubling as any other aspect of this 
(law) is, is that it would legalize rampant, pervasive advertising of 
marijuana and marijuana products. In Colorado it is everywhere," she 
said, adding the ads "make Joe Camel look adult and crude."

Williams believes the best response to the Colorado experience is too 
put the brakes on the Alaska legalization movement at the polls. Her 
opponents in the pro-pot camp say the state can regulate marijuana 
advertising, just as the state could limit advertising on alcohol and 
tobacco products for public health reasons.

The law voters would adopt includes language giving the state 
regulatory control over advertising. Taylor Bickford, a paid campaign 
spokesman for the initiative, said there is no reason to believe 
Alaskans would allow rampant advertising of marijuana.

"I would suggest that the rules they will adopt will be rather 
strict," Bickford said. "I think the biggest news out of Colorado 
since [retail] sales went live is that the amount of tax revenue 
they've collected has been bigger than projected."

[sidebar]

Growing Stronger

The vote no on marijuana legalization camp is urging voters to search 
the internet for terms such as "ear wax," "shatter" and "butane hash 
oil" and hash oil does deserve some explanation. Hash oil is not the 
same as hashish, the tar-like product some readers might remember if 
they smoked pot in the 1970s. Hashish is manufactured mechanically, 
using screens or presses, as it has been for thousands of years. Hash 
oil is extracted from marijuana buds using a solvent. It's possible 
to use water as the solvent, but over the past half-decade a process 
using pressurized butane (an off-the-shelf product designed to reload 
lighters) has become increasingly widespread.

The resulting oil (or tar that looks like wax) can have levels of THC 
ranging from 60 to 90 percent. For comparison, about a dozen years 
ago the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency was claiming the world-famous 
Alaska marijuana strain known as Matanuska Thunderfuck was producing 
marijuana that tested at about 29 percent THC. So hash oil is 
off-the-charts strong and making lots of headlines. The Miami New 
Times last October dubbed butane hash oil "the future of pot" and 
Rolling Stone Magazine has reported that even hardcore smokers get 
"cosmically baked" by smoking a piece of the wax about the size of 
Tic-tac candy.

Media reports about butane hash oil (or BHO) inevitably include 
another trend: amateur chemists triggering explosions and fires while 
attempting butane extraction in a kitchen or garage. The process 
includes forcing butane through a PVC pipe full of marijuana and 
gathering the butane-infused oil in a second container.

It's not difficult to find tutorials online that show how the process 
works. But it's important to note that one moment the chemist will be 
holding a butane pipe bomb and after that he or she will be dealing 
with flammable fumes - many tutorials warn this is a job best 
performed outdoors. The Denver-based weekly, Westword, reported last 
month a "top six" roundup of fires and explosions caused by people 
attempting butane extraction in Colorado. Put simply: it's dangerous 
stuff for amateurs.

Al Tamagni Jr., the spokesman for the Anchorage Fire Department, said 
this week via email AFD has never responded to an explosion or fire 
related to BHO. The department's inspector, Tamagni wrote, was not 
aware of any such accident happening in Alaska.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom