To the editor: Social intervention by the government always brings unintended consequences to the table. Drug prohibition is no different.

Cocaine had been around and used for almost a hundred years before the 1970s, when there was demand in the inner city for a cheap drug. Demand for drugs has always and will always be met and it was - in the form of crack cocaine. You cook a little cocaine with simple kitchen ingredients and it turns into a hard, smokable substance that provides a far more potent high. Had cocaine been legal, crack likely would never have been invented.

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Federal prosecutors in Anchorage have dropped their appeals in the marijuana case nicknamed the "magic odor case" after just one week earlier filing for an appeal to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The government had signaled its intention to appeal a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Ralph Beistline to throw out evidence - including about 500 marijuana plants and some sophisticated growing equipment - that was the result of a contested search warrant.

Judge Beistline was the second federal judge to toss out the evidence.

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Alaska's Marijuana Timeline

August 1972: Alaska voters overwhelmingly approve a right to privacy amendment to the state constitution.

December 1972: Homer resident Irwin Ravin pushes a test case under the new right, arranging to get charged for possession of two joints. 1975: Alaska Supreme Court rules unanimously in favor of Ravin, declaring that the right to privacy trumps the law banning possession of small amounts of pot in a person's home. It doesn't define how much pot that is. 1982: The Alaska Legislature settles on four ounces as the most a person can possess before committing a misdemeanor.

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For more than 30 years, Alaska's libertarian streak made it the only state in which it was legal, under some circumstances, to smoke marijuana just for the fun of it.

Then along came voters in Colorado and Washington state. Last year, both states passed initiatives legalizing pot and setting up rules for production, sales and taxation.

Now backers of a similar initiative here say they are close to giving Alaskans the same opportunity to just say yes. They're nearly halfway to reaching their goal of getting 45,000 signatures by Dec. 1, about 15,000 more than the number needed to put the measure on the 2014 primary election ballot, according to Timothy Hinterberger, the measure's main sponsor.

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My "back doctor" appointment went south. I had planned to praise the previously prescribed physical therapy, which had erased my back pain brought on by the onset of arthritis in my knee. I also intended to give away an extra unused prescription so that my doctor could give it to an indigent patient in need. In spite of my injury having occurred on my own time at home and not at work or in an automobile "accident," my insurance provided excellent coverage for my treatment and prescribed medications.

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The War on Drugs has become such a standard part of American life that most of us are unaware that it has been growing steadily, sometimes dramatically, from its origins in 1914. The Prohibition Era came and went apparently without any of its lessons impacting the companion prohibition on drugs.

The occasional voices of reason from academe and from government sponsored studies by institutions like the Rand Corporation and even the federal Office of Drug Control Policy calling for a new direction have been largely ignored.

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Americans like wars: the war on poverty -- we lost that one when a bigger war came along.

In 1971, while losing the war in Vietnam, President Nixon declared a war on drugs.

The two wars got mixed together in some unpleasant ways. American soldiers began using drugs in Vietnam as a way of deadening the fear and loathing in fighting a war where civilians were indistinguishable from enemy soldiers.

Back home, a youthful revolution developed: a rejection not just of the war and the draft that was taking so many young men to death or injury but of the humbug that had preceded it. The revolution rejected apple pie, stars-and-stripes morality with its undertones of bigotry and overtones of hypocrisy and embraced the emerging marijuana plant as a principal source of recreational pleasure.

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Alaska's marijuana reformers are back, this time offering a wholesale legalization of the drug in a state once known as the most permissive in the nation when it comes to smoking pot. Last week the group called Campaign to Regulate Marijuana cleared its first hurdle with an approval from Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell to circulate a petition and put the legalization of pot on the August 2014 primary election ballot. If the petitioners are successful, voters will be asked to pass a seven-page law that legalizes and regulates the production, sale and possession of marijuana on a footing somewhat similar to alcohol.

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(AP) - The state will be the next battleground in the effort to legalize marijuana. Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, whose office oversees elections, certified a ballot initiative application on Friday that would make it legal for adults to possess up to one ounce of marijuana. Supporters will have one year to collect 30,169 signatures from qualified voters across the state to get the question on the ballot. They aim to do this by January. The effort in Alaska comes after voters in Washington State and Colorado legalized marijuana last year. The proposal would make it legal for those 21 and older to use and possess up to an ounce of marijuana, though not in public.

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NEW YORK - Danielle Bradford was raised in state custody because of her parent's abuse and drug dependencies.

When she was 18 she moved out, found work at a local waffle shop and got her first apartment in Nashville, Tenn. Her estranged father helped by co-signing on the lease.

One evening she was at home with her neighbors when three police officers knocked on the door. They said they had received a report that there was a portable meth lab on her property. "I allowed them to look, and obviously they did not find anything," she said. What the police did find was that her neighbor had some marijuana and a bowl that she had prepared for him.

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Officials May OK Petition Drive to Put Issue on Ballot

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - Alaska, known for its live-and-let-live lifestyle, is poised to become the next battleground in the push to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

The state has a complicated history with the drug, with its highest court ruling nearly 40 years ago that adults have a constitutional right to possess and smoke marijuana for personal use in their own homes.

In the late 1990s, Alaska became one of the first states to allow the use of pot for medicinal reasons.

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Vote in 2014 on Recreational Use?

WASHINGTON - Alaska voters likely will get a chance next year to make their state the third in the country to approve the recreational use of marijuana by adults 21and older.

Pot backers Tuesday took the first step toward getting the measure on the August 2014 primary ballot, presenting draft language and 100 signatures to the Alaska lieutenant governor's office.

The measure would tax and regulate marijuana sales and allow Alaskans to cultivate marijuana for personal use.

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WASHINGTON - Alaska voters likely will get a chance next year to make their state the third in the country to approve the recreational use of marijuana by adults 21 and older.

Pot backers Tuesday took the first step toward getting the measure on the August 2014 primary ballot, presenting draft language and 100 signatures to the Alaska lieutenant governor's office.

The measure would tax and regulate marijuana sales and allow Alaskans to cultivate marijuana for personal use.

If state officials decide everything is in order after a 60-day review, backers will have until mid-January to get signatures from 30,169 more people to force a vote, said Steve Fox, the national political director of the Marijuana Policy Project, a pro-legalization group in Washington, D.C.

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