Alaskans likely to vote on legalizing recreational marijuana in six months

As reported in this lengthy local article, “Alaska moved one big step closer Tuesday to a public vote on legalizing marijuana.”  Here are the details:

On Tuesday, a ballot initiative campaign to decriminalize and regulate pot reached the signature threshold necessary under state election law to put the issue on the Aug. 19 primary ballot.

If the measure passes, Alaska would become the third state in the nation, after Colorado and Washington, to allow cannabis for recreational use. Backers modeled the proposed initiative after Colorado’s new law, which regulates and taxes marijuana similarly to alcohol.

Alaska’s Campaign to Regulate Marijuana reached the signature threshold on Tuesday morning, when totals posted on the Alaska Division of Elections’ website showed that 31,593 valid voter signatures had been counted. State election law requires 30,000 signatures. Ballot initiative backers also met a requirement to gather signatures from voters in at least 30 of 40 House districts. “They have hit the magic numbers,” said state elections director Gail Fenumiai….

Reaching the signature requirement was the last major hurdle to getting the question on the Aug. 19 primary election ballot. There, Alaskans will decide on legal pot along other big questions for the state, including a controversial oil-tax referendum, an initiative that would require legislative approval for future large-scale mines in the Bristol Bay region and potentially a boost to the minimum wage.

All that — plus a contested U.S. Senate race primary — could draw large numbers of voters, said Ivan Moore, an Anchorage pollster and campaign consultant. “The primary election is looking at being one of the highest turnout primaries we’ve had ever, I think,” he said. It’s not clear how that will play for the marijuana question….

In a 2004 Ivan Moore Research poll that asked if pot should be decriminalized, only 38 percent of Alaskans said yes. By 2010, the number jumped to 43 percent when Alaskans were asked if pot should be legalized. A 2013 poll by the North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling firm on behalf of the Marijuana Policy Project found that 54 percent of Alaskans polled would vote yes on a ballot initiative. “There has been phenomenal change,” Moore said.

So far, the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana has mostly been funded by the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that is the largest marijuana policy reform group in the country. The group has contributed $1,000 in cash and $3,757 in services and other in-kind donations, according to Alaska Public Offices Commission campaign disclosure reports. Four individual donors had contributed a total of $1,800 as of Jan. 11….

A national anti-legalization group headed by Patrick Kennedy has said it plans to campaign against the ballot initiative. Smart Approaches to Marijuana, like its opponent the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana, appears to be selling its side of the issue as the only approach compatible with the Alaskan value of independence.

“Smart Approaches to Marijuana has been approached by Alaskan activists who don’t want to see the safety problems and burdensome government regulation that would come with legalization,” wrote spokesman Kevin Sabet in an email Tuesdsay. Sabet wouldn’t say who those Alaskan activists were. Plans will be announced later this spring, he wrote.

[Taylor Bickford, who works for Strategies 360] said that argument won’t far. “I don’t think Alaskans are going to have a member of the Kennedy family from the East Coast telling us how to live our lives,” Bickford said.

Recent related post:

Is Alaska only months away from becoming the first red state to legalize marijuana?