Marijuana

Residents and borough staff in Petersburg are trying to come to grips with state regulations for marijuana that take effect later this month.

The regulations create a new licensing process for businesses that could grow, test and sell pot in the state. But they have some in Petersburg thinking the hurdles for new pot businesses will be too difficult and local marijuana sales will remain underground and off the books.

A subcommittee of Petersburg’s marijuana regulation advisory committee met about permitting and taxation requirements in late January.

“The one thing that is really going to make it more difficult for locally is the testing, having to ship it out to be tested when you can’t ship it out,” said subcommittee chair Kevin Clark. “And then building a testing facility here that would be prohibitively expensive, considering the kind of volume you’d have to generate in order to justify it.”

Without somebody building a testing facility in Petersburg, the requirement would mean sending samples off the island to a larger community with such a facility. And that would mean shipping those samples by commercial airlines, state ferry or some other transport.

Problem is, that transport is prohibited by federal law. That has local residents thinking that testing off-island can’t happen.

Between the requirements for testing and the licenses needed for new businesses, subcommittee members did not seem to think any pot businesses would be opening up anytime soon.

“So what we’re going to wind up with is an underground, period,” said subcommittee member Chuck Rose.

Communities can pass local laws that are more restrictive than the state regulations, or even opt out of the legal pot experiment altogether. So far there’s been little interest in going in that direction.

Clark thought the state’s regulations were restrictive enough.

“There’s a reason I haven’t heard of anybody planning on starting a business here,” Clark said. “I haven’t heard of anybody looking for licenses. There’s been no rumor of it. I don’t know has anybody else heard of anybody going to start a shop?”

The subcommittee decided to take no action on making recommendations. Members said they did not want to recommend any local restrictions that would be more burdensome than the new state regulations.

“I believe that people will be able to transport marijuana around this state, licensee to licensee, with a transportation manifest from the seed to sell software system and all of the requirements that are required in the regulations, ” said Cynthia Franklin, director of the state’s marijuana control board.

She noted that people are focusing on the federal prohibition on transporting marijuana.

“But what everyone seems to be forgetting is the entire operation is prohibited by federal law. In other words, growing marijuana is prohibited by federal law, testing marijuana is prohibited by federal law, everything about this activity is prohibited by federal law. Marijuana is a schedule one controlled substance on the federal controlled substances act.”

Franklin agreed that it comes down to what laws the federal government will enforce. And she said the only guidance Alaska has is a 2013 memo from U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Cole, which outlines federal priorities for law enforcement in states that have voted to legalize pot.

That memo says the feds will require the states to implement robust regulatory controls on the pot industry. And it says federal law enforcement will focus on things like keeping pot out of the hands of minors, and prohibiting transport to states that haven’t legalized.

Franklin does not yet know how pot transport for testing will happen but believed it will. She said she’s much more worried about Alaska opening up pot businesses only 500 feet from schools. That’s the buffer in the new state regulations and it’s based on Alaska drug free zone distance. But it’s half of the federal buffer requirement.

“The buffer zone issue is a much bigger issue and much more likely to attract the feds attention from my perspective then a small amount of marijuana being sent from Petersburg to Anchorage for testing,” Franklin said.

She said Alaska, unlike other states with legal pot, is breaking new ground with a proposed buffer smaller than the 1,000-foot federal requirement. Petersburg has asked for a smaller buffer zone of 200 feet, because the 500-foot distance would rule out most of the downtown business district for pot businesses.

Franklin thought pot businesses will be able to operate in a small town like Petersburg.

“The people in small communities are saying the regulations favor urban communities but they’re saying that because they haven’t sat down and they don’t understand the relationship between the regulations and what they say and the federal enforcement priorities, because we cannot change federal law with regulations promulgated by the marijuana control board.”

The state’s regulations don’t take effect until Feb. 21. The state plans to offer training for business to get through the application process in Anchorage Feb. 17 and 18. Franklin said that training will be videotaped and posted on the state’s website.

Forms for new businesses to apply are not yet ready. The Marijuana Control Board is schedule to approve those Feb. 11. And the state plans to be ready to accept applications Feb. 24.

Meanwhile, Petersburg’s borough staff started drafting a local ordinance for pot businesses. Borough assembly members this month said they wanted to wait until the new regulations take effect before finishing up that new local law.

Washington State Patrol Sgt. Mark Crandall half-jokingly says he can tell a driver is under the influence of marijuana during a traffic stop when the motorist becomes overly familiar and is calling him “dude.”

The truth in the joke, Crandall says, is that attitude and speech patterns can be effective markers for drugged driving. And, according to legalization advocates and some in law enforcement, they can be more reliable than blood tests that measure THC — the psychoactive compound in marijuana.

When it comes time to go to court, the testimony of an officer trained as a drug recognition expert is often more valuable than a THC test because of disparities in how the drug impacts driving ability, Crandall said.

“Here’s the really bad driving that I saw, here’s the magnified impairment that I saw on the side of the road,” he said. “It’s telling a good story and making sure that it’s backed up with facts, and evidence, and proof, and the ability of the officer to articulate it well.”

As more states make medical and recreational marijuana use legal, they increasingly are grappling with what constitutes DUID, or driving under the influence of drugs, and how to detect and prosecute it. And they’re finding it is more difficult than identifying and convicting drunken drivers.

While marijuana is the substance, other than alcohol, most frequently found in drivers involved in car accidents, the rate at which it actually causes crashes is unclear.

At least 17 states, including Washington, have “per se” laws, which make it illegal to have certain levels of THC in one’s body while operating a vehicle, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Under these laws, no additional evidence is required to prove a driver is impaired.

Of those states, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington allow for some amount of THC to be found in a driver’s blood, ranging from 1 to 5 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml). Other states leave no wiggle room and consider any amount of THC to be impairing and grounds for being charged with DUID.

In Colorado, where recreational marijuana became legal in 2012, drivers are assumed to be under the influence of marijuana if they have THC levels of 5 ng/ml or higher, but the law also lets defendants produce evidence that they were not impaired.

Alaska, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Oregon and Washington allow adult recreational use of marijuana, and another 18 states permit its use for medical purposes. More states are expected to permit recreational marijuana use as advocates push to put legalization initiatives on state ballots in 2016.

At an August 2015 NCSL meeting in Seattle, nearly all policymakers who attended a session on legalizing marijuana said they expected their states would soon have to debate legalization, if they haven’t already. A study by the Pew Research Center released in April found that 53 percent of adults supported the legal use of marijuana. (Pew also funds Stateline).

How THC Works

State lawmakers, conditioned by the universal system of rating blood alcohol content to determine intoxication, have long wanted similar measurements to gauge a driver’s impairment under the influence of THC. But that has proven elusive.

Unlike alcohol consumption, which creates impairments that are measurable by blood alcohol content, the consumption of marijuana creates physical effects that vary from person to person and THC levels can depend on how cannabis is ingested and whether the person is a long-term marijuana user, said Rebecca Hartman, a researcher with the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

People’s THC levels peak quickly as they inhale marijuana smoke and then decrease rapidly in the first 30 minutes to an hour after smoking. Even though the THC levels are decreasing, users can still be impaired, Hartman said.

How the human body processes marijuana varies so much from person to person that even on different days a user might metabolize the drug at different rates, she said.

“We’ve shown that cannabis increases lane weaving and some studies have shown one of the big things that cannabis is known to impair is driver attention,” Hartman said.

A June study on drugged driving conducted by Hartman and others suggested that people driving with THC levels of 13.1 ng/ml had a tendency to weave within lanes, similar to those who had a 0.08 blood alcohol content, the point at which drivers can be prosecuted in all states.

George Bianchi, a criminal defense attorney in Seattle, said the rule in his state (5 ng/ml) is not appropriate because studies of driver impairment vary so much. He said he thinks Hartman’s study opens the door to using 13 ng/ml as a national standard for marijuana impairment.

“I think you should try to quantify it somehow,” he said. “And this recent study seems to do that.”

Controlled Drugged Driving

Some states see creating DUID laws as part of the marijuana legalization process, said Morgan Fox, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project.

Several states considered adding or modifying per se DUID limits in 2015. Legislation that would have elevated the Illinois per se standard from zero tolerance to 5 ng/ml, as amended (down from 15 ng/ml) by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, died without final approval from the General Assembly. And a bill that would create a per se standard in New Jersey is before that Legislature.Alabama, Maine and New Mexico also reviewed bills adding per se DUID limits ranging from 2 ng/ml to 5 ng/ml, though none passed.

“Considering most states already have them in place, and they are already being enforced, we don’t see the need to add them,” Fox said. “But we’re not going to scuttle a bill that would legalize [marijuana] because of per se [laws].”

Because of the variation in users’ impairment levels, critics of blood testing like Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, say the tests are not an appropriate measure of how well a person was driving at the time of a traffic stop or crash.

“Where is the need to go in this [direction] with cannabis when there is a consensus among experts in the field that the presence of THC in the blood in a single sample is not an accurate predictor of recent use nor is it a predictor of performance?” Armentano said.

He cites a February 2015 drug and alcohol crash risk study from the Department of Transportation that points to contradictions between previous studies about the relationship between marijuana use and motor vehicle crashes. The analysis, which looked at marijuana and other drugs, found that, when adjusted for age, gender and alcohol use, there was no significant increase in the level of crash risk associated with the use of THC.

Inappropriate Arrests

Legalization advocates said they worry that per se standards will lead to DUID convictions of people who were not impaired by marijuana when they were pulled over for a traffic violation, but might test positive for THC because they are frequent recreational users or use marijuana as medicine.

“These laws could lead to significant unintended consequences and the most significant of those is that the law prosecutes and convicts individuals of violating traffic safety laws for simply having engaged in behavior in the privacy of their own home that at no point rose to a legitimate traffic safety threat,” Armentano said. In 2014 the Arizona Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that allowed for the prosecution of drivers under the per se law, even if there was no evidence of impairment. The previous year, the Michigan high court ruled that police must prove driver impairment to pursue DUID charges.

States began adopting THC-specific standards in the early 1990s as a consequence of highly publicized crashes and other accidents, Armentano said, contending that the laws are largely unnecessary given established protocols for determining if a driver is under the influence of a drug.

“The officer is collecting evidence from the minute he flashes his lights,” he said. “Based on evidence observed at the scene, he or she is going to start making some judgment about whether [the driver] might be under the influence.”

Read Original Article – December 30, 2015
As Legal Marijuana Expands, States Struggle With Drugged Driving

Fairbanks first marijuana business has been open for just over a month. “The Higher Calling” – or THC – is one of several so-called “clubs” in the state that have arisen since voter’s passage of a marijuana legalization initiative in 2014.

Clubs like Fairbanks’ “The Higher Calling” do not sell marijuana. The Higher Calling’s co-owner Megan Mooers describes her downtown area business as a private club for cannabis enthusiasts.

“Membership allows you use of the building to bring your own cannabis products to use or smoke,” Mooers said.

Mooers says the club, which offers coffee, snacks and a game room, signed up 130 paying members in its first month of operation.

Mooers’ husband and business partner Marcus Mooers says the club does not allow synthetic marijuana or alcohol on premises and is being very careful about how the operation is run.

“We recognize that we are the flagship cannabis business for all of the North Star Boroughs,” he said. “While we’re doing a lot to try to make our members happy and to help the community realize that it’s OK for them, it’s legal now, it’s OK to come out and consume and even say that you smoke marijuana or consume marijuana, we also want to make sure that we’re really respectful to the community and the neighborhood.”

Mooers says that includes measures taken in light of the club’s proximity to a day care facility.

“We’ve kept our signage to a minimum; we tailored our hours to sort of be alternate to the day care there,” he said. “We are, out of respect for the community, trying to look around and see what other options we have to possibly move the club to a different location.”

Marijuana clubs are not currently covered by local or state regulations, which are focused on commercial marijuana cultivation, processing, testing and retail sale. Megan Mooers says they are ready to comply if things change.

“There’s debate on whether there will be licensing for private clubs,” she said. “If so, then we’ll be applying for a license for that.”

Alaska Marijuana Control Board executive Director Cindy Franklin says the panel recognizes the need for public places to consume marijuana but considers clubs operating in their current unlicensed, unregulated form, as illegal, adding that the state board has yet to address the issue.

Alaska is about to become the first state to have pot cafes where people can buy and consume marijuana, similar to Amsterdam.

Right now, that’s not legal in other states that have recreational marijuana.

Brothers James and Giono Barrett, who own a marijuana business, Rainforest Farms, in Juneau, also plan to produce a line of chocolate bars infused with pot. They’ll be an alternative to the sugary, processed edibles Giono says he has eaten recently in Colorado.

“Man, when I was down there there was just a lot of products I didn’t want to put in my body at all — not because of the cannabis,” he says. “I actually got sick off one of them. I got nauseous.”

Unlike Colorado, Rainforest Farms can have a cafe for its customers to eat their pot-infused treats. In November, the Alaska state marijuana control board approved on-site consumption at retail stores. Those businesses could start popping up as early as summer. Each municipality has to give the ultimate OK.

“I am not thinking, ‘Oh, goody, goody, we’re going to get rich because of pot.’ That is not in my thought process at all,” says Mary Becker, Juneau’s mayor.

She’s a retired middle school teacher. Drug aversion programs, she says, were a regular staple in her classroom.

“I have grandchildren and I’ve taught school and I want to see these young people have good jobs. They can’t even get a job in the mine if they test with a drug in their system,” she says.

Pot cafes in Alaska give people a legal place to consume marijuana, but some municipalities have anti-smoking laws. Juneau has a strict clean air ordinance that prohibits smoking tobacco and marijuana in public places, in businesses like restaurants and even in private clubs like an Elks Lodge.

Becker says while she’s not excited her state would be the first to have marijuana cafes, a pot brownie doesn’t bother her as much as a joint.

“I mean, I’d rather people didn’t put their calories in their bodies with edibles of drugs, but it does not damage the smoking ordinance and that’s been one of my real concerns,” she says.

Attorney Kevin Higgins says he smokes marijuana at his home to relieve job stress but would consider going to pot cafes.

He says the number of local pot enthusiasts like himself probably isn’t big enough to sustain businesses. But there is another possibility.

“Tourists are obviously willing to pay a premium on a lot of things just to be part of the experience of floating up the Inside Passage,” he says.

And with close to a million cruise ship passengers each year, marijuana cafes could mean an added attraction in Juneau.

But Becker says pot pales in comparison to the city’s other attractions.

“Have we looked at the Mendenhall Glacier? Have we gone out on the water and seen the whales? I have a hard time thinking people are going to come to Juneau to get their pot,” Becker says.

Read Original Article – December 24, 2015 4:55 AM ET

A quartet of Western states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana, and voters in half a dozen more states may vote on pot legalization in 2016. That’s leading law enforcement officials and entrepreneurs to try to come up with better ways of testing for driving while stoned.

Police usually spot impaired drivers by noting driving behavior, coordination, mannerisms and physical cues. But while a handheld breath test can quickly determine whether someone is legally drunk based on ethanol in the breath, there’s no instant test for marijuana intoxication.

In Washington state, which is one of 18 states that has set limits on marijuana intoxication while driving, law enforcement can seek a warrant for a blood draw to test for THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana. But it can take weeks for results to come back from the toxicology lab.

With more Washington state drivers being arrested with marijuana in their systems since the state legalized recreational marijuana, there’s growing need for a fast way to identify impaired drivers and get them off the road.

Herb Hill, a chemistry professor at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash., heard about the challenges of nailing drug-impaired drivers from a colleague who was a political science professor. “I said, ‘Why don’t we have a Breathalyzer for that?’ He said none exists,” Hill said. “I said, “We can probably make one.’ ”

So Hill and his colleagues are trying to develop a hand-held device that police officers can use to detect THC in breath. Preliminary field testing with 30 human subjects this spring established that the device can detect THC in breath, Hill said. Much more testing is ahead to look at potential variations among gender, race, body types and amount of use.

Hill’s team recruits volunteers who buy their own weed, smoke it at their homes and then blow into the prototype.

“We had to go through institutional board review,” Hill said, referring to federal restrictions on research involving marijuana. “It took us almost a year to get permission to do this.”

“It wasn’t very hard to find the volunteers,” Hill added. “We have a waiting list of volunteers.”

The human guinea pigs get paid just over minimum wage to smoke their pot.

Hill said the portable device may look like an alcohol Breathalyzer, but works differently inside. His team is modifying existing sniffers used at airports to detect explosives and by the military to alert to the presence of chemical warfare agents. The technology is called ion mobility spectrometry.

“In the beginning at least this would not be used as evidential information,” Hill explained. “It would be used as screening information to help the officer say he should take a blood sample now.”

Jake Yancey, a police officer in Tumwater, Wash., said he would be “super excited” to get a detector that he hopes could “drastically speed up” the process of confirming or ruling out a person’s possible marijuana impairment. But a pot breath test must prove itself highly accurate before Washington state would adopt it, according to Lt. Rob Sharpe, head of the impaired driving section at the Washington State Patrol.

“Even if it is a preliminary device, we still need that level of accuracy and reliability for trust and confidence,” Sharpe said. “Regardless where it comes into play in that arrest decision, we’re talking about people’s rights, their liberties and freedoms. We need to be accurate.”

All of which points to it being several years at the earliest before you’d see a roadside breath test to identify stoned drivers.

Sharpe said a pot breath test might not even be the chosen answer. He said other companies and research teams are working on alternatives, including cheek swabs or a saliva test, a smartphone-based eye scan or analyzing sweat on a person’s skin.

Since legalizing marijuana use for adults, Washington and Colorado have both set legal limits for THC intoxication at five nanograms per milliliter of blood. Oregon and Alaska have not established a legal THC limit beyond which a driver is presumed to be impaired.

Some marijuana activists have expressed fears this technology could lead to unimpaired drivers getting unfairly arrested. They point out that THC persists in the body long after the high has worn off. The effects of weed are also different in different people, including between infrequent versus chronic smokers.

Indeed, there is no universal agreement on how much THC is impairing, with countries in Europe setting legal limits at 2 to 7 nanograms.

As part of the next rounds of human testing of the marijuana breath tester, the Washington State researchers want to correlate breath readings of THC with simultaneous blood draws and measurements. This could help to establish how long THC lingers in the breath after initial consumption.

Early on, the WSU professors took their idea to Chemring, a Falls Church, Va., instrument maker that agreed to pay for the R&D and will have the commercialization rights.

The Chemring-WSU team is by no means alone in trying to perfect a marijuana breath test. Competitors include Lifeloc Technologies of Colorado, which already makes alcohol testers, and Cannabix Technologies Inc. of Vancouver, Canada, has shown off an initial prototype at conferences. There are reportedly several research teams at work in Europe as well.

Copyright 2015 NWNews. To see more, visit NWNews.

The Ketchikan City Council voted Thursday night to ban the commercial sale of marijuana within city limits. Mayor Lew Williams III requested the issue be brought before the council. Williams said he doesn’t oppose the sale of certain items but is concerned with oils, concentrates and edibles.

“Oils and the edibles, I think, are just made for a younger audience. For this community, I am dead against having that sold within the City of Ketchikan,” Williams said. “The other stuff – they can grow it, they can smoke it, it’s legalized in the state, it doesn’t inhibit anybody’s usage.”

Under state law, municipalities can block commercial sales completely, but, if they approve sales, they cannot restrict the types of products sold.

Councilmember Dick Coose made the motion to prohibit commercial marijuana sales.

Coose says he sees no benefit to the city or the people.

“And they say, ‘What do you mean, don’t you believe or trust the voters?’” Coose said. “And I say, sometimes voters don’t always get it right. This is one of them which I think is wrong because there are too many dangers out there. If people are going to smoke it, they’ve got that opportunity. They can grow it in their house and they can share it. But we don’t have to make it readily available, especially the edibles and the other things.”

Cultivation for personal use is legal. Coose said he’s concerned that regulations do not allow a municipality to control THC concentrations. THC is the chemical that gives marijuana most of its psychological effects. Coose added that he does not believe the city would make much money from sales.

Councilmember Bob Sivertsen seconded Coose’s motion, and offered an amendment. Rather than making a final decision, he suggested the council recommend commercial marijuana sales be prohibited to a local marijuana advisory committee. He said a vote was premature since the state is still revising regulations. He too expressed concerns about concentrates.

Councilmember Judy Zenge said voters approved the use of marijuana and their wishes should be honored, with restrictions.

“Now Bob (Sivertsen) might be talking to the 920 people who voted no, but apparently I’ve been speaking to the 1154 people who voted yes,” Zenge said. “Marijuana is legal and there are going to be some people that are going to need some help with that. Just like folks who have alcohol dependency were going to end up with people that have pot dependency.”

Zenge said not everyone who uses marijuana will become dependent. She said taxes can help address dependency issues. Zenge also said she doesn’t understand why people oppose retail stores because the products have to be tested and THC concentrations reported.

The council rejected Sivertsen’s amendment.

The commercial ban passed 5-2. Councilmembers Coose, Sivertsen, Dave Kiffer, Janalee Gage and Julie Isom voted yes. Councilmembers Zenge and KJ Harris voted no.