Saturday, March 21, 2015

Once again police target pot use before legalization stops them





Once again and despite the will of voters, Alaska authorities show they are not going to go along with the legalization of marijuana in the state.

Friday March 20, Anchorage police served warrants at the Alaska Cannabis Club supposedly searching for evidence of "misconduct involving a controlled substance."  One of the operators of the club, Charlo Greene has been an outspoken advocate of legalized pot.

Short video of Charlo Greene telling what's going on during the police raid.

According to a report in the Alaska Dispatch News, officers found nine marijuana plants in one side of a duplex and 17 on the other side. Greene told reporters there were 10 to 12 medical marijuana cardholders in the building at the time.

Along with plants and boxes and paper bags of other “evidence" police towed away two vehicles. That seizure may have been illegal. Attorney General Eric Holder recently issued new federal regulations regarding forfeiture of civil assets in drug busts limiting how those assets can be used by law enforcement. Often those assets have been kept even when the persons charged were acquitted. In one notorious case police seized a suspect's parents' house in such a forfeiture.

A police spokesman told the News Dispatch the department had received reports of illegal marijuana sales at the club house.  Received reports? The target of this raid is a known supporter of legal pot and a defendant of the use of medical marijuana who apparently everyone but the police knew was selling pot to legal medical-marijuana card holders. So they sent 12 officers to serve the warrant for a fourth degree misdemeanor.

Now, given that the legalization vote last fall did not make sales legal until details have been worked out, to the letter of the law, sale is still illegal. As to the sprit of the referendum, well, not so much.

The first day pot was legal police targeted and arrested three persons for smoking in public. Now, again they target what seems to be a simple outlet of medical marijuana. It seems like the police want to get as many people arrested and charged on pot offenses as they can before they can't do it any more.

Taken together they indicate police are targeting simple marijuana use in an effort to intimidate, and discourage as many people as possible before marijuana truly becomes legal, if it ever does. What threat to the public does this club constitute? None, it just offends authorities that people sell and use pot despite what a majority of voters say.

Meanwhile the Legislature chips away at the legalization process, adding more and more restrictions rather than looking for ways to streamline the legalization process. And the police are feeding more nonviolent simple possessers into the court and penal systems as quickly as they can before they can't any more. And they are picking on the easy targets.

There are far more serious drug problems in Anchorage and Alaska than a few stoned marijuana users. How many meth labs are there? When was the last time we read about a lab raided? Recently the news reported an increase in heroin use in Alaska. But, oh boy, we caught a woman who sells marijuana right out in the open. That took a lot of detective work. Public inebriation is still a problem as far as I know and that goes on unabated, but by god we shut down that woman selling pot.

The folks who initiated the referendum along with the rest of us need to pay attention here before the Legislature enacts such a tangle of regulatory obstacles that the idea of legalization will be lost in the red tape while police again and again will target pot users for simple possession and use along with sale of small amounts.

There is a broader issue here is of elected officials not following the will of the people they represent and that lesson needs to be brought home. Instead of looking at the many benefits of legalized pot, everyone in authority has taken a negative view toward it and continues to look for ways to keep it from happening. That sort of subversion is very obvious in the malfunctions of  Congress and now we have a spotlighted example in our own state government. It would be an excellent masters thesis for some graduate student to document and interpret how legislators subvert the will of the people to promote their own beliefs and purposes.

Take a lesson from Colorado and Washington, states that worked in a positive direction to make the will of the people the law of the land.

Alaska Dispatch News story
Degrees of legalization – managing marijuana
Attorney general ends incentive for law enforcement to seize property
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