HOUSTON -- This scrappy town of 2,000 that straddles 22 square miles along the Parks Highway has long been the only place in Southcentral Alaska where buying fireworks is legal.

Now Houston is welcoming the state's nascent marijuana industry in hopes of drumming up some much-needed revenue for a city struggling to stay solvent.

If a voter-initiative ban goes through this fall, Houston could become the only place in the Ireland-sized Matanuska-Susitna Borough where commercial marijuana operations are legal.

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The mayor announces a $14 million surplus. Whee! I'm sure he will use it to mitigate the 7 percent increase in property taxes that he proposes. Whoops - there I go, daydreaming again. But maybe the pot tax will help us. Whoops again - that measly 5 percent will only bring in a half million or so.

And it's mostly earmarked for regulating pot, for APD pot training and for educating the public on the use of pot. Wasn't one of the arguments for legalizing pot the idea that its taxes would bring in a flood of money to help reduce our present shortfall?

- - Don Neal

Anchorage

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For the sake of 149,021 Alaska residents who voted in favor of legalizing marijuana in our state, let's go over this again ... we voted (and won!) due to the carefully researched wording of the bill. It read that marijuana would be "regulated the same as alcohol" and we also believed this sale "regulated the same as alcohol" would bring in many tax dollars, which our state needs even more badly now than in 2014. So, the powers that be in Mat-Su have decided that: 1. They are going out of their way to make sure it is NOT "regulated the same as alcohol" with measures beyond the norm. 2. If Alaska is following Colorado's lead, then any borough that does not favorably pass the law would receive zero tax dollars.

Help me to understand why our 149,021 votes didn't count. Reminds many of us again when we voted twice (and won!) to move the capital from Juneau.

- - Kathleen R. Jones

Palmer

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Government Should Not Keep Seized Property If There's No Conviction

Civil liberties make unusual bedfellows.

If you follow the Alaska Legislature, you know this byline is the equivalent of pigs taking flight or a glacier in hell. For people who have a life outside politics, let us explain: We the authors, Rep. Tammie Wilson, R-North Pole, and Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, D-Sitka, inhabit what could be described as disparate real estate on the political-philosophical spectrum.

With regularity, and with abundant good cheer, we cancel out each other's votes on the floor of the Alaska House of Representatives. Board of Fish confirmations, University of Alaska budget, Common Core. You name it, we are like chocolate and vanilla, oil and vinegar, Coke and Pepsi, Tesla and Edison. We are expert agreeable disagreers.

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WASILLA -- Kellsie Green died in January, six days after she entered the Anchorage jail -- 24 years old, weighing only about 80 pounds and about to embark on the brutal process of detoxing from a 4-gram-a-day heroin habit.

Now Green's father is claiming in a civil wrongful death lawsuit filed late last month against the Alaska Department of Corrections that the brief jail sentence he'd hoped would save her life instead led to her death.

John Green said his daughter's cellmates at the Anchorage jail told him requests to help Kellsie went mostly ignored even as her condition worsened to the point she could no longer stand, vomited blood and soiled herself.

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Gray Area for Social Clubs Could Lead to Patchwork Local Regulation

After the closure of The Higher Calling cannabis club last week, the argument over a proposed Fairbanks North Star Borough ordinance that would close similar marijuana-related businesses operating without a state license may be less heated. But it will still be important, as social marijuana clubs now exist in a sort of legal limbo not yet addressed under state law. And while the borough certainly could step in to regulate that gray area, it's really the state's responsibility to clarify the law so that current and prospective operators can know whether their businesses are sanctioned. It's a situation that has gone unaddressed for too long.

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Prospective marijuana business owner Bryant Thorp was the very first person in Alaska to get word that his cannabusiness application was complete, except for one thing -- a background check that the state doesn't have the legal authority to conduct.

In the Marijuana Control Board's March 25 letter to Thorp the agency wrote that it couldn't approve his application until his fingerprints were sent to the FBI for a national criminal background check.

"At this time, we are unable to do so," wrote director Cynthia Franklin. That's because the Legislature must write the provision into law, she wrote.

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Alaska's sole congressman, Don Young, spoke at a Native issues forum in Juneau on Tuesday, answering audience questions in classic Don Young style.

In a meeting sponsored by the Central Council Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and Sealaska Corp., which was live-streamed online, Young, 83, held forth on the Trump phenomenon, legalized marijuana, dealing with Alaska's growing heroin problem, and his future in Congress.

On Donald Trump:

Young was asked his feelings on the GOP presidential race. In a radio interview last week, the congressman declared his support for Ohio Gov. John Kasich and implied that he questions real estate mogul Donald Trump's qualifications when it comes to the economy.

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Sen. Lisa Murkowski picked up an issue Lower 48 states with legal marijuana still haven't resolved in a March 2 letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

The letter asks Lynch to re-examine federal gun regulations inconsistent with state laws where marijuana is legal. Along with banking -- federal laws prohibit bank involvement with marijuana businesses -- gun ownership exemplifies a schism between federal and state laws concerning cannabis.

A 2011 directive from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives specifically prohibits federal firearms dealers from selling to marijuana users, both medical and recreational. Private gun sales between individuals, which are not federally controlled, do not have this restriction.

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Voters on the Kenai Peninsula may decide whether to ban commercial marijuana within the borough, should an Assembly ordinance move forward.

On Tuesday, the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly will hear public testimony on the ordinance and hold a vote to introduce it. The ordinance is sponsored by Assembly President Blaine Gilman, who said Monday he expects a large public turnout and lengthy testimony Tuesday evening.

Under the ordinance, voters would decide whether to ban all four marijuana license types -- growers, retail stores, manufacturers and testing facilities -- in the borough.

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Yet another article concerning heroin addiction has appeared in this paper. It is as if writing about the problem will change something. It won't.

I lived in Fairbanks for 20 winters and observed that every spring as breakup approached, people would continue to drive down Small Tracks Road, past the "thin ice" signs, around the recently installed barricades, and across the Chena River ice road until someone, usually a 20-something male in a pickup, dropped through the ice thereby necessitating a tow and an expensive repair. It happens during the season that the sandhill cranes return to Creamer's Field. Both events are foreseeable but a Chena River dunking is preventable.

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WASILLA -- Soaring heroin overdose death rates in Alaska still don't outpace the rate of fatal overdoses from prescription opioid pain relievers, according to the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.

Deaths from heroin increased from seven in 2009 to 36 deaths last year, according to a bulletin released Thursday by the state Division of Public Health.

The number of fatal overdoses from prescription opioids was far higher: 83 deaths last year, down from 104 deaths in 2009.

Fatal overdoses linked to prescription pain medications dropped considerably in 2010 after pharmaceutical companies changed formulations to deter abuse but then began rising again, according to Dr. Jay Butler, the state's chief medical officer and director of the public health division.

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Unlicensed marijuana growers who are discovered with more cannabis than allowed under personal grow laws may find themselves subject to both criminal and tax penalties, should a bill circulating the Alaska Legislature be signed into law.

House Bill 337, sponsored by Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, R-Anchorage, seeks to give the state Department of Revenue's Tax Division more enforcement power.

"It's going to help the legitimate marijuana industry get off the ground," LeDoux said of the bill Saturday. "That's my purpose."

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From Herbal Outfitters LLC to Dazed Dog Gardens, there's no shortage of creative and pun-laden business names in the nearly 200 marijuana business licenses that are currently working through the state system, which were released Tuesday.

The public can now see all the in-progress marijuana business applications on the Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office's website. For businesses that are far enough along in their applications, a public notice is also linked in the spreadsheet that provides the name of the owner and the exact location of the business, according to Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office Director Cynthia Franklin.

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The company that will provide a seed-to-sale tracking system for every single cannabis plant in Alaska's commercial industry is the same company that tracks commercial cannabis in Colorado and Oregon, the state announced this week.

Franwell, which calls itself a technology company focusing on supply chain tracking, has contracted with the state for more than five years, according to Alcoholic and Marijuana Control Office director Cynthia Franklin.

The contract was finalized March 7 and lasts until June 30, 2021, Franklin wrote in an email. The total cost of the contract is $105,000.

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State Rep. Dan Saddler, a Republican from Eagle River, indicated that heroin addicts and the Alaska Legislature face similar problems and it is time that they both face the problems head on instead of avoiding them with a needle or a bottle of alcohol.

This is how he justifies cutting funds for recovery programs, implying that addicts need to "face the difficult choices and to make difficult choices." His argument is many things: uninformed, damaging, hurtful -- and that doesn't include the logical fallacies embedded in his perspective. Perhaps it could be best summarized as a fundamental attribution error.

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WASILLA -- Marijuana entrepreneurs in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the state's reputed pot-growing capital, will have little time to get up and running before voters decide whether or not to back a commercial ban.

The borough assembly on Tuesday night delayed a decision on a new permitting system for marijuana businesses. But it's the combination of the state's licensing schedule and a pending ballot initiative to be decided in early October that's causing the time crunch.

Pot-related companies will probably be selling products for a few weeks at best before Mat-Su residents vote Oct. 4 on a proposal to outlaw commercial marijuana operations -- grows, testing labs, retail dispensaries -- throughout the borough except for those involving industrial hemp. The vote applies to all areas outside the cities of Palmer, Wasilla and Houston; Palmer and Wasilla already have bans in place.

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I read (ADN, Feb. 28) that Wasilla has voted to ban retail marijuana stores. This from the so-called "meth capital of Alaska." Makes one wonder if meth dealers don't have lobbyists.

- - Ken Flynn

Anchorage

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Anchorage officials will mark off the minimum 500 feet between schools and pot shops by using walking distances, not a straight line, the Anchorage Assembly decided in a unanimous vote Tuesday night.

The decision means more potential properties will be available for pot businesses in Anchorage. The Assembly's vote, a reversal from two weeks earlier, effectively loosens restrictions on where businesses will be allowed to open by in some cases shrinking the off-limits zone around schools and other restricted places.

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Shall Homer City Council ban commercial cannabis cultivation, testing, processing and sales from Homer? Already a majority of Palmer voters and the Wasilla city council have answered yes to a similar question. Others may answer their own way before too long. Alaskans and local governments around the state are posing similar questions in ordinances and local ballot items. But this question is being discussed right now in Homer, and I believe the entire state can benefit from listening in on Homer's dialog.

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