On Tuesday evening, a smattering of former and current Alaska politicians attended the first fundraising event for "Big Marijuana. Big Mistake. Vote No on 2" -- the group opposing the Nov. 4 ballot measure to legalize, tax and regulate recreational marijuana -- bringing in about $12,000 for the anti-legalization campaign.

Roughly 50 people gathered for the fundraiser at the downtown Anchorage home of Deborah Williams, the deputy treasurer of the opposition group. The event came on the same day the Alaska Native Village CEO Association added its voice to the debate, deciding to oppose the ballot measure.

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FAIRBANKS - As a U.S. Army veteran of Operation Desert Storm, I am asking Alaskans on this Independence Day weekend to join me in publicly supporting a policy reform grounded in a concern for the individual liberties of Alaskans.

On Nov. 4, 2014, Alaskans will have the chance to vote on a ballot initiative that will end the harmful and ineffective policy of marijuana prohibition and replace it with a system in which marijuana is taxed and regulated like alcohol. Ballot Measure 2 will restrict legal use to adults 21 years of age or older and allow limited sale of marijuana through licensed, taxpaying businesses that test their products and require proof of age.

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It swallowed people up.

That's what it really did, if you want to know the truth. It swallowed them up whole, swallowed them up by the millions.

In the process, it hollowed out communities, broke families, stranded hope. Politicians brayed that they were being "tough on crime" -- as if anyone is really in favor of crime -- as they imposed ever longer and more inflexible sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. But the "War on Drugs" didn't hurt drugs at all: Usage rose by 2,800 percent - -- that's not a typo -- in the 40 years after it began in 1971. The "War" also made America the biggest jailer on Earth and drained a trillion dollars -- still not a typo -- from the treasury.

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The Petersburg Police Department may petition the federal government to become designated as a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA).

A coalition of law enforcement agencies can petition to become a HIDTA region, however, according to the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), no agencies in Southeast have applied. In a report to the assembly several months ago, Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht announced that Petersburg was being considered for the HIDTA designation. Police Chief Kelly Swihart said that in November the FBI informed him that they were considering working towards designating Southeast as a HIDTA. Should the Feds go forward with a designation process Petersburg hopes to participate, Swihart said.

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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.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A regulatory system and enforcement involving legalized marijuana could cost Alaska $3.7 million to $7 million, according to a report by eight state agencies.

Alaskans will consider a pot legalization measure on the Aug. 19 primary ballot then would have nine months to prepare for legalization if voters say yes.

The report included information from the departments of Public Safety, Environmental Conservation and others, the Anchorage Daily News said Sunday.

The cost analysis was presented last month to the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. The report acknowledged that details about legalization remain to be worked out.

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A week after the ballot measure to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana in Alaska was officially certified, five speakers debated issues surrounding the initiative to hundreds who had gathered at the Wendy Williamson Auditorium at the University of Alaska Anchorage Wednesday evening.

The event, sponsored by the UAA Justice Center and Justice Club, began with keynote speaker Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, giving an impassioned speech about drug policy in the United States. Calling the war on drugs a "rat hole of waste," Nadelmann paced the stage, microphone in hand, to the applause of several hundred audience members, many of whom were in their 20s and 30s.

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Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Meeting With Legislators This Week

When it comes to legalizing pot, you'd think you know which side the police fall on.

But one law enforcement group is in Juneau this week advocating for the legalization of recreational marijuana, an issue Alaskans will decide with an August ballot initiative.

"Tax and regulate, that's all we're saying," Lance Buchholtz, a 59-year-old retired sheriff from Wisconsin, told the Empire on Wednesday.

Buchholtz is scheduled to meet with six state legislators on behalf of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an international nonprofit organization that calls for the end of the War on Drugs. Its members are primarily current and former police officers, prosecutors and judges who reject a blanket prohibition and propose a tightly regulated system to control the drug market.

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Initiative Likely on August Ballot

Alaska is poised to become the third state to legalize retail marijuana after pro-pot advocates this week cleared the signature hurdle to place an initiative on the August ballot.

The Committee to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol in Alaska hit 31,593 valid signatures Tuesday, well above the 30,169 signatures required to place the measure before voters. The initiative is expected to appear on the Aug. 19 primary ballot once a final count is certified by the state.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Enough petition signatures have been verified to place an initiative seeking to legalize marijuana on the ballot this summer in Alaska, election officials said Tuesday.

The petition has met all the thresholds necessary to appear on the Aug. 19 primary ballot, the Alaska Division of Elections said.

The lieutenant governor's office said it had verified the signatures from registered voters as of Monday evening. The total of 31,500 was a thousand more than needed, with about 6,000 signatures remaining to be checked.

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Alaska moved one big step closer Tuesday to a public vote on legalizing marijuana.

On Tuesday, a ballot initiative campaign to decriminalize and regulate pot reached the signature threshold necessary under state election law to put the issue on the Aug. 19 primary ballot.

If the measure passes, Alaska would become the third state in the nation, after Colorado and Washington, to allow cannabis for recreational use.

Backers modeled the proposed initiative after Colorado's new law, which regulates and taxes marijuana similarly to alcohol.

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Alaska voters will get a third chance to legalize the recreational use of marijuana: The Alaska Division of Elections released data Tuesday showing that the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana in Alaska had collected enough signatures to qualify for the Aug. 19 primary election ballot.

Medical marijuana use was approved by state voters in 1998 by an 18-percentage-point margin. But two years later, voters rejected by the same margin a measure that would have legalized pot for recreational use. In 2004, another legalization measure was defeated by 11 percentage points.

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Alaska could be the next state to reconsider the prohibition on marijuana, following legalization votes by Colorado and Washington last year.

Alaska elections officials posted data Tuesday showing that a petition for a statewide vote on marijuana legalization has gained enough signatures and met legal thresholds needed to put the issue before voters.

Under Alaska law, the petition when officially certified would appear on the Aug. 19 primary ballot. No formal opposition to the initiative has emerged thus far.

Taylor Bickford, spokesman for an Anchorage-based organization that is behind the ballot drive, said that though petitions are still being counted, the state has reported 31,593 signatures are qualified, more than the 30,169 needed.

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On Wednesday night, those in Anchorage will have a chance to hear from Ethan Nadelmann, the man known as the single most influential architect of the decades-long movement to decriminalize pot -- a movement that's been picking up steam in recent years with legalization victories in Washington and Colorado.

A 56-year-old New Yorker with a handful of degrees from Harvard, Nadelmann is credited for engineering a national strategy that has sought to frame regulating pot sales as a generator of tax revenues and a way to refocus law enforcement on policing serious crime. Rolling Stone magazine called him "the driving force for the legalization of marijuana in America."

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Like a stoner having trouble rising from his easy chair, Alaska's campaign to legalize marijuana is off to a slow start. The legalization campaign, which calls itself Alaska Campaign to Regulate Marijuana, has so far reported raising less than $8,000 - nearly all of it in the form of "in-kind" donations from the national group Marijuana Policy Project.

The campaigners can expect competition in Alaska, where pot policy has been voted on four times since 1990. Last week news broke in the square media that a group called Smart Approaches to Marijuana has been recruiting Alaskans to launch a campaign against the campaign to legalize weed, which is on track for the August 2014 primary ballot.

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The leader of a group working against a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana in Alaska said the regulations it calls for are a "facade." But the real facade is the effort being made to prop up the failed -- and devilish -- policy of prohibition.

Did anyone else find it interesting that Kevin Sabet, ex-government-subsidized cannabis (marijuana, if you prefer the historically chosen government derogatory term) prohibitionist and co-founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, claimed the proposed regulations to re-legalize cannabis in Alaska is a "facade"?

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Did anyone else find it interesting that Kevin Sabet, ex-government-subsidized cannabis (marijuana, if you prefer the historically chosen government derogatory term) prohibitionist and co-founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, claimed the proposed regulations to re-legalize cannabis in Alaska is a "facade"?

I hope Alaskans don't mind me butting in, but the real facade is cannabis prohibition itself, one of America's worst policy failures in history, founded on lies, half-truths and propaganda from the beginning and dependent on them to continue.

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Opposition to the marijuana legalization initiative in Alaska will ramp up in coming months.

Kevin Sabet, co-founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), said Monday that the organization was approached by a "handful of leaders" in Alaska's medical and scientific communities expressing their concern over the legalization of marijuana in Alaska.

Alaska marijuana legalization initiative turns in 45,000 signatures Legal marijuana in Colorado: Was rollout a success? "This is all homegrown," Sabet said. He declined to name the Alaskans who contacted his group, but said that they would be available in coming months.

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Backers of a ballot initiative that could make Alaska the third state to legalize marijuana for recreational use turned in some 46,000 signatures to the state election officials Wednesday -- putting the question one step closer to the Aug. 19 ballot.

The Alaska measure is modeled on the 2012 Colorado initiative that paved the way for a recreational-pot industry that threw open its doors there on Jan. 1, when the law went into effect.

The backers of the Alaska initiative effort say legal marijuana is an idea whose time has come.

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There is a mad rush to legalize marijuana these days but it's time to rethink that generous yet foolish move -- generous because it lifts the onus of crime from peaceful smokers but foolish because it harms mental development and health.

Legalization, as we have seen it in Colorado and Washington state, lifts the cloud of legal fears from the shoulders of millions of pot smokers -- some of them actually languishing in prisons for decades for selling or possessing a few ounces of pot.

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