Marijuana

Alaska Congressman Don Young has co-sponsored a bill to end the federal ban on medical marijuana in states that have chosen to make it legal.

The bill would also allow VA doctors to recommend marijuana use to their patients and require the government to start issuing marijuana research licenses.

Young said in a written statement that he considers both medical and recreational marijuana a matter of states’ rights.

The bill is known as the CARERS Act, an acronym of “Compassionate Access, Research Expansion and Respect States.” Its prime House sponsor is Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. It is the twin of a Senate bill sponsored by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. The legislation could give marijuana entrepreneurs an alternative to operating in an all-cash environment. In states that allow marijuana commerce, the bill would allow those businesses to use banks, without subjecting the banks to charges of money laundering.

California’s system of direct democracy — the voter initiative process — has produced landmark laws reducing property taxes, banning affirmative action and legalizing medical marijuana.

Now there’s a bid to declare that “the people of California wisely command” that gays and lesbians can be killed.

You read that right.

The “Sodomite Suppression Act,” as proposed, calls sodomy “a monstrous evil” that should be punishable “by bullets to the head or any other convenient method.”

The act would punish anyone who distributes “sodomistic propaganda” to minors with a $1 million fine, and/or up to 10 years in prison, and/or the possibility of a lifetime expulsion from California.

The proposal comes from a Huntington Beach-based attorney, Matt McLaughlin. He did not return calls for comment, and his voice mailbox is full.

Now maybe you’re thinking there’s no way such a blatantly illegal measure would ever be approved by California voters.

But here’s the rub: We might get a chance to find out, because it appears that there’s no legal way for state officials to stop the author of this proposal from collecting enough voter signatures to put it on the ballot.

Legal experts are left shaking their heads.

Vikram Amar, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Davis, said he is almost reluctant to even get drawn into the discussion “to give this guy the attention he wants.”

Still, Amar noted there are at least two big issues at stake.

One, given that it costs only $200 to submit an initiative and start the signature-gathering process in California, perhaps the fee should be higher to discourage people from abusing the process. (On the other hand, that could make it prohibitive for legitimate grass-roots petitions to gain traction without well-off backers.)

Two, some advocate that the state attorney general, the official whose job duties include writing a title and summary for any proposed initiative, should have the authority to kill a proposal that would conflict with superseding law — like murder. (Of course, then elected partisan officials with their own political agendas would be the filters.)

But both of those ideas raise their own problems, Amar said.

“Anyone who has 200 bucks for an initiative, probably can raise 2,000 bucks,” he said. “But raise it to something meaningful like [10,000] or 20,000 bucks, then you’re sending a message about the accessibility of direct democracy.”

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, favors raising the fee, even though she said, “It won’t stop people from submitting crazy ideas.”

Like Amar, Alexander does not favor the idea of allowing an elected official, in this case Attorney General Kamala Harris, to block the measure outright by calling it illegal.

The initiative process “needs to be kept at arm’s length from the Legislature and the politicians who frequently want to usurp its power,” Alexander said.

The initiative’s author has provoked discussion and controversy. In fact, there have been calls for McLaughlin to be disbarred for advocating murder.

But, in the end, Amar doubts his idea will ever get enough voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. It’s estimated that a ballot-initiative campaign in California costs about $1 million to collect the 365,888 signatures to qualify.

It will take several million dollars more to get enough signatures for such a controversial idea, Amar contends.

“But if I get approached by someone asking me to sign this thing,” Amar said, “that will spoil my day having to think about this guy.”

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

This film looks beyond the controversies surrounding Medical Marijuana programs and instead, investigates the science. The hour-long program reveals how the plant’s chemical compounds act on the brain and the body to potentially treat a myriad of difficult conditions and diseases.

Monday March 16th at 8:00 p.m. on 360 North

A bill that would eliminate daylight saving time in Alaska is now one step away from the Senate floor. But as the legislation has advanced, it has also changed in a way that could divide the state — literally.

Time is a social construct. Its movement is the subject of perennial debate in science, and some physicists have gone so far as to call it an illusion.

That has not stopped Alaska lawmakers from trying to tinker with it.

“In order will be [Senate Bill] 6, the elimination of daylight saving time,” opened bill sponsor Anna MacKinnon, when presenting the legislation to the Senate Finance Committee.

MacKinnon, a Republican state senator from Eagle River, points to negative health effects and the loss of productivity that comes from adjusting clocks twice a year. The bill would have Alaska join Arizona in exempting itself from daylight saving. In the winter, nothing would change when it comes to timing. But in the spring, when other states switch their clocks to get more evening light, Alaska would lag an extra hour. That would put it further behind the east coast.

“It would alternate between four and five under the current bill,” said MacKinnon.

That concept raised some hackles during public testimony on Tuesday morning, particularly from Southeast Alaska.

Pilots complained it would cut back the amount of flying time, since they would offer fewer evening flights. Dan Corson, of the Juneau-based Wings Airways, testified the change would hit them hard during tourist season.

“If this went into effect today, for this summer, we would lose up to 15 percent of business due to the loss of the one hour,” said Corson.

Stores that make money off of cruise ship passengers worried the change would mean less shopping time, while some testifiers said they simply did not like the potential loss of evening recreation time. Money managers, like Jim Parise with the Alaska Permanent Fund, feel the exemption would make it harder to do business with the rest of the country.

“If we are five hours away from New York, personally I will be going to bed around 7 o’clock,” said Parise.

While testimony skewed against the bill during the hearing, Sen. MacKinnon pointed to an online survey showing support for the elimination of daylight saving time. And Sen. Lyman Hoffman, a Bethel Democrat who caucuses with the majority, said communities in the western portion of the state could see their timing situation somewhat normalized by the bill.

“If you’ve ever been into Dutch Harbor-Unalaska, you are closer to Tokyo than Washington, DC,” said Hoffman. “There are other parts of the state that are going to see great benefit because of this legislation.”

Because of Alaska’s sprawling size and its distance from the contiguous United States, its place in time has been a regular source of disagreement. Until 1983, the state was split into four time zones, with Southeast on the same schedule as the West Coast and the Aleutians zoned with Hawaii. Now, Alaska is almost entirely in the same time zone, with only a few places — like Adak to the West and Metlakatla to the east — off of it.

With all the consternation about the loss of evening light in Southeast, the Senate Finance Committee added a provision that could allow Alaska to partially revert to that timezone map. Sen. MacKinnon explained the new version of the bill would allow the state to request a time zone change from the United States Department of Transportation to put all or part of Alaska in sync with the West Coast.

“We would petition the federal government to advance — at least some people have suggested — that we should advance to Pacific Time, but Alaska would stop flipping,” said MacKinnon.

That version of the bill advanced without opposition.

After discussing the nature of time, and how it affects Alaska, the Senate Finance Committee then continued on an agenda that felt pulled straight from a college dorm room: The next item was marijuana.

Nearly two-thirds of Millennials who identify as Republican support legalizing marijuana, while almost half of older GOP Gen-Xers do, according to a recently released Pew survey that could be an indicator of where the debate is heading.

While the Pew Research Center survey published on Friday shows a 14 percentage point gap between Republicans and Democrats under the age of 34, six-in-10 GOP-leaning Millennials still said they favor legalizing cannabis. Seventy-seven percent of surveyed Democrats in the same age group held that view.

For those aged 35 to 50, the same 14 percentage point gap between Republicans and Democrats was evident, but the respective percentages were somewhat lower. In that age group, 47 percent of Republicans favored legalization, as opposed to 61 percent of Democrats.

As Pew notes: “The debate over marijuana also comes ahead of the 2016 presidential election, when both political parties are fighting over the coveted Millennial vote as this group of eligible voters swells in size, even if its members do not consistently show up on Election Day.”

The survey follows controversial decisions in Alaska and the District of Colombia. They join Colorado and Washington State. Medical marijuana is legal in some other states, such as California and Minnesota.

The survey on attitudes on marijuana legalization by political affiliation largely mirrors a survey Pew conducted a year ago concerning same-sex marriage. It showed that 61 percent of self-identified Republicans under 30 favored allowing gays and lesbians to marry, as opposed to 77 percent of Democrats in the same age group.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

With hours to go before the District of Columbia legalizes the possession of small amounts of marijuana, a Republican congressman is threatening the federal city’s mayor with arrest.

Initiative 71, which was approved by 70 percent of voters last November, has brought to the surface the District’s long struggle to govern itself. As the Constitution and federal law mandate, the District does not have voting representatives or senators in Congress and every law passed by the District has to be reviewed by Congress.

The District argues that at midnight tonight, Congress’ review window closes and Initiative 71 becomes law.

Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, takes issue with that interpretation and in a letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser said the District would be in “willful violation of the law,” if it goes through with its plans.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Chaffetz took an even more confrontational tone.

“You can go to prison for this,” the paper quoted him as saying. “We’re not playing a little game here.”

Hours later, Bowser emerged flanked by all the members of the city council, her attorney general and her police chief and said the District was moving forward with Initiative 71.

“We believe that we’re acting lawfully,” Bowser said in defense of her city’s actions.

She was then asked about Chaffetz’s comments to the Post.

“I have a lot of things to do here in the district. Me being in jail wouldn’t be a good thing,” she said.

Bowser added that the District will cooperate with Chaffetz and that the city’s attorney general was weighing Chaffetz’s request for all the names and roles of city employees who help enact Initiative 71. However, she said, she believed that “bullying the District of Columbia is not what his constituents expect.”

Congress had tried to thwart Initiative 71 earlier, when they attached language to a Continuing Resolution that prohibited the District from legislating and regulating the marijuana market.

As a result, The Washington Post explains, it could result in the “Wild West of marijuana.”

The paper reported:

“Residents and visitors old enough to drink a beer will be able to possess enough pot to roll 100 joints. They will be able to carry it, share it, smoke it and grow it.

“But it’s entirely unclear how anyone will obtain it. Unlike the four states where voters have approved recreational pot use, the District government has been barred from establishing rules governing how marijuana will be sold. It was prohibited from doing so by Congress, which has jurisdiction over the city. …

“D.C. officials say that Congress’s action did not halt the initiative, but it did set the city up for potential chaos. Barring ­last-minute federal intervention, the District’s attorney general said that pot will become legal as early as Feb. 26 without any regulations in place to govern a new marketplace that is likely to explode into view.”

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.