The Marijuana Control Board approved the first-ever commercial marijuana businesses in Alaska on Thursday.

After a rocky start to the meeting, the board began approving cultivation and testing facilities in midafternoon.

"Everything takes longer than expected," newly appointed Chair Peter Mlynarik said of the meeting's morning delays. But once approvals began, they were "going fast," he said.

The first business to be approved was CannTest testing facility, located in Anchorage's Ship Creek area. CannTest was unanimously approved by the five-member board. The board's approval is contingent on local approval, which includes a 60-day protest period that must either run its course or be waived by a local government before a business can open its doors.

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FAIRBANKS - On a warm, cloudless Memorial Day, Mike Emers surveyed his domain at Rosie Creek Farm. Emers has owned the family farm for 16 years, a spacious plot cut from the Interior Alaska wilderness. It was the last day the farm would exist in its current iteration. After that, its transformation to a cannabis growing facility would begin.

The next day, an 8-foot fence went up around the perimeter, satisfying part of the state's security requirements for the new legal marijuana industry.

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FAIRBANKS - Efforts are underway to stop marijuana businesses from opening in the Fairbanks North Star Borough.

A Salcha man is launching an initiative with hopes to keep legal marijuana trade out of the borough, while the president of a strip mall condominium association maintains pot shops are prohibited in the River Mall on College Road under condo association rules because marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

The borough so far has issued more than 40 land use permits for different marijuana businesses, mainly cultivation.

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On Dec. 1, 2015, Dalon White woke up in the hospital, unsure how he got there. The last thing he remembered was smoking a "stick" of Spice he'd bought for $5 in downtown Anchorage.

"Next thing you know, the world's spinning and I was falling over," White said.

White, then 21, was charged with a crime that day, but he didn't realize it. He faces a misdemeanor drug charge, one of about 50 that have been issued since Anchorage criminalized Spice six months ago.

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A prison guard at Goose Creek Correctional Center has been arrested on federal drug charges after the FBI says the guard admitted he tried to smuggle heroin and marijuana into the prison for inmates this week.

Court records show Adam Jason Spindler, 32, is charged with possessing a controlled substance with the intent to distribute, as well as conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and to possess it with the intent to distribute.

According to a criminal complaint against Spindler written by FBI Special Agent Richard Fuller, the state Department of Corrections earlier this month asked the bureau to investigate suspicions that Spindler - a night-shift guard at Goose Creek since April 2013 - was "smuggling drugs into GCCC for distribution to inmates."

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The second Northwest Cannabis Classic trade show at the Dena'ina Civic and Convention Center over the weekend had plenty of free giveaways, including marijuana leaf stickers and lighters. A few exhibitor booths even had edibles such as candies and cookies.

But they wouldn't get you high.

"These aren't infused," said Martin Christensen of the Oracle Cookie Company, pointing at the elaborately flavored cookies he had laid out for convention attendees to try. "The cops actually came over and asked me, 'Are these infused?' "

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There's a source of strength hidden within our society that most seem to overlook. Many discount this source of strength, focusing on the past rather than potential. However, hidden in plain sight, all through our society, recovering addicts are making society better for all of us.

Junkies, druggies, methheads, crackheads, tweakers, smackheads, trippers, whatever you've called them in the past, when they start the process of recovery, they are taking a journey more difficult than most of us will ever understand.

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FAIRBANKS - When Megan and Marcus Mooers started thinking about opening a private marijuana club, they knew they wanted the name to have the initials THC.

THC is short for tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana.

"We kind of spitballed for names until we found one that worked," Megan Mooers said. "It had to be something clever, something we could brand."

They came up with The Higher Calling, opened their doors in November and attracted hundreds of members. But five months later, Fairbanks' first marijuana business closed because it lacked enough dues-paying members to continue. Now, under local law, marijuana clubs in the Fairbanks North Star Borough are illegal.

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PALMER -- The Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly late Tuesday approved a temporary moratorium on all commercial cannabis operations.

The moratorium reflects the Assembly's desire to wait until local voters in early October decide a borough-wide ban that includes everything but industrial hemp.

The Assembly unanimously put on hold any applications for marijuana businesses including cultivation, testing, manufacture and retail sales through Oct. 19. But they approved a sunset clause of Aug. 17 for cultivation.

The rest of the moratorium extends through mid-October, until local elections are certified.

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Sara Williams just isn't that comfortable with handling $10 million in cash.

Williams is the CEO of Midnight Greenery, a retail store she and co-owner Tina Smith plan to open in Anchorage this year to sell cannabis flowers, concentrates, oils, edibles and other products.

But like most who are eager to get into Alaska's marijuana industry, Williams is worried about what to do with all the incoming cash that she can't keep in a bank -- especially if business goes well.

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The Controlled Substances Act is not outdated.

It is a law structured in a way meant to protect science, medicine, patients and the public. It is not absolutist. It has an administrative structure built into it to control for mistakes, new scientific discoveries and even evolving public or medical understanding.

Today's federal drug laws appear to have done a disservice to marijuana, locking it into an inappropriate schedule where it is banned outright.

But in reality, negative drug policy around marijuana is not the fault of the CSA. Instead, a variety of other factors -- mainly attributed to biased lawmakers -- have hindered the law from working properly when it comes to the drug.

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Congress and President Obama are under pressure to reschedule marijuana. While rescheduling makes sense, it doesn't solve the state/federal conflict over marijuana (de-scheduling would be better). But more important, it wouldn't fix the broken scheduling system. Ideally, marijuana reform should be part of a broader bill rewriting the Controlled Substances Act.

The Controlled Substances Act created a five-category scheduling system for most legal and illegal drugs (although alcohol and tobacco were notably omitted). Depending on what category a drug is in, the drug is either subject to varying degrees of regulation and control (Schedules II through V) -- or completely prohibited, otherwise unregulated and left to criminals to manufacture and distribute (Schedule I). The scheduling of various drugs was decided largely by Congress and absent a scientific process -- with some strange results.

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No happy hours, but serving food and non-alcoholic beverages would be allowed in Alaska's marijuana cafes, according to draft rules accepted by the state's Marijuana Control Board.

On Tuesday, the board agreed on draft regulations that show the first details of what the "on-site consumption" area, akin to a cafe or bar, would look like. The draft now heads to the public for comment.

Alaska is the only state where regulators have carved out in their rules a public place where people can go to smoke or eat cannabis.

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More than two years ago, Leif Abel sat around a table with his brother and his father and a list of about 50 possible names for the marijuana cultivation business they wanted to start in Kasilof.

After considering whether to take on an image that clearly sends a message about cannabis or perhaps something more discreet, they landed on the name Greatland Ganja and a logo that prominently features a cannabis leaf.

"We're proud of what we're doing," Abel said. "We're trying to project a culture of openness and acceptance of people within this subculture that is coming into main society."

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Alaska marijuana business owners will be subject to national background checks if a bill that passed the Senate on Friday morning is signed into law.

Senate Bill 165 deals mainly with Alaska's alcohol regulations, including a provision to greatly reduce minor consumption penalties. The bill passed the Senate during the fifth day of overtime for the Legislature and now heads to Gov. Bill Walker's desk for his signature.

A provision in the bill authorizes the Marijuana Control Board to conduct national background checks on business applicants, a key component for the entity tasked with approving the first licenses for Alaska's fledgling legal cannabis industry.

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On the western coast of Alaska, more than 500 miles northwest of Anchorage, Robin Thomas hopes to start the first legal commercial marijuana grow in the famed gold rush city of Nome.

A fisherman by trade, Thomas is looking for a "retirement job" that is less dangerous and less physically demanding than crabbing. He wants something a little easier, something that offers year-round employment.

Enter marijuana.

Thomas has been waiting for legalization for decades. "It finally happened," he said.

He's figured out the basics of his grow operation. He's tallied up investment costs and has designed his own blueprints. He's put in his required public notice to the roughly 3,000 residents of the city. He's even got his own strain of medicinal marijuana.

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Opening the door at Pot Luck Events, the inconspicuous marijuana social club not far from Anchorage's downtown Hilton, can be an intense welcome on a busy night. A heavy aroma hits you in the face: pungent, hazy air.

On Saturday, the place teemed with pot lovers and hopeful marijuana entrepreneurs alike for the smoky release party of ArcticBlue, a strain of pot from Anchorage cultivator ArcticBlue Farms. People gathered in a corner to smoke dabs -- highly concentrated marijuana - -- or lounged in low-slung chairs to share joints and bowls under dim lights and a disco ball.

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Anchorage's Pot Luck Events is the only marijuana social club still operating without a legal challenge, as statewide puzzlement to their legality produces a patchwork of local controls.

Fairbanks' The Higher Calling and Homer's Kachemak Cannabis Club have both closed, and the City of Kenai is seeking an injunction against Green Rush Events.

The clubs, which allow dues-paying members to share and consume cannabis but do not sell it themselves, inhabit either a murky legal area or a clearly defined one, depending on whom you ask.

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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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