High hopes in Alaska for sweeping pot law

ANCHORAGE - The folks behind a statewide ballot initiative to decriminalize marijuana in Alaska will stare you down with their glassy eyes and sermonize on the numerous commercial uses for industrial hemp, the environmental benefits of hemp production and the medicinal benefits of the cannabis plant.

And sure, the Nov. 7 measure is about all of those things.

Mostly, though, it's about the freedom to get stoned.

"In most places, you have to pass a pee test in order to work there," says Soren Wuerth, a former head of the Alaska Green Party who works at the Free Hemp in Alaska campaign office in Anchorage. "In our place, you have to fail the pee test to work here."

Efforts to change laws, whatever they may be, tend to focus on incremental steps. But instead of adopting a deliberate strategy, backers of the Alaska marijuana initiative have declared anarchy.

The initiative is so sweeping - it not only would legalize pot for personal use but grant amnesty to anyone with marijuana convictions - that even the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and High Times, the Sports Illustrated for potheads, were slow to support the measure.

The Free Hemp in Alaska campaign office is plastered with orange stickers that organizers found while rummaging through inventories of secondhand office supplies. The stickers, probably leftovers from a bakery, read, "Baked with pride in Alaska."

It's a fitting motto for a campaign where some volunteers and paid workers come to work high and where a few loiter near a back door to sneak tokes, even though campaign protocol prohibits such behavior.

Some volunteers, including a 16-year-old boy, say they are at the nonprofit campaign working off court-imposed community-service sentences for marijuana-related convictions.

"Yeah, I find that ironic," says Thomas Holohan, 34, who satisfied 200 hours of community service by designing the campaign's Web site ( www.freehempinak.org).

"Sweet irony at that."

The campaign has set up shop in a strip mall on one of Anchorage's seedier streets. A yellow mural painted on the south face of the building reads, "Vote Yes. Nov. 7, 2000." The message and date are separated by an image of a giant green cannabis leaf.

The campaign office side door is always open, providing passage to an adjacent espresso bar with trippy decor that is the informal hangout for the potheads, libertarians and environmentalists behind the initiative.

Coffee Shop Pax is a shrine to dope. A painted marijuana leaf frames the top of four plate-glass windows. Garlands of fake marijuana leaves hang on two pillars like wreaths and also ring the tip jar on the counter. A picture of Bob Marley taking a toke is taped near an espresso machine.

On the other side of the coffee house is Exit Glass & Hemporium, which sells soap, string, satchels and shirts, all made of hemp. It also sells handmade pipes and glass jars to store stashes.

Within these surroundings, initiative supporters feel invincible.

What the law would do

If the initiative passes, Alaska will be the only state in the country to legalize marijuana consumption, possession, distribution and cultivation for personal use, practiced in private.

"Our law wouldn't protect you if you are caught smoking in a car, but it would protect you if you are driving it to a friend's house to smoke," explains Al Anders, chairman of Free Hemp in Alaska.

The law would apply to anyone 18 and older, even though Alaskans aren't allowed to buy cigarettes until they are 19 or alcohol until 21. It would release any Alaskan currently behind bars for a marijuana-related crime and clear the criminal records of those with past convictions. And it would convene a panel to consider restitution to those who have been imprisoned.

Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles opposes the measure. A former U.S. attorney for Alaska under President Bush, Wev Shea, is tirelessly campaigning against it.

"If marijuana is legalized, it becomes socially acceptable, and once it becomes socially acceptable, a lot more people are going to try it," Shea says. "If this passes, what is going to be the perception of Alaska? That we all just sit around and smoke dope?"

The section of the initiative that prohibits state or local law-enforcement agencies from working on marijuana cases would shackle all drug-enforcement efforts in a state that relies heavily on multiagency task forces, Shea says.

"If this passes, Alaska is going to basically be the drug haven of North America," he says.

Initiative supporter Mitch Mitchell, one year out of federal prison for trafficking in 1,100 pounds of marijuana, thinks the initiative will be good for tourism.

"They are going to have to build another airport," he says.

Pot at the polls

Political consultants in Alaska say the measure has a good shot at passing, helped by a predicted high turnout for the presidential race and a high-profile property-tax-limit initiative.

Opponents of the measure are concerned. "People in Alaska are free thinkers, and their opinion - which obviously I don't agree with - is that marijuana is a soft drug and therefore not a big deal," Shea says.

When handicapping the election, there also are practical things to consider. Political pundits and people on both sides of the issue agree: Alaskans are herb-friendly.

Two years ago, Alaskans voted overwhelmingly to legalize marijuana use for medical patients. Washington and Oregon are among six states that have passed similar laws recently.

Marijuana for private, recreational use was once legal in Alaska. In 1975, the state Supreme Court extended the constitutional right to privacy to marijuana use. In 1983, however, the Legislature limited amounts protected under the law to 4 ounces or less. And in 1990, voters passed an initiative that made marijuana illegal again.

Cheryl Lewis, a 45-year-old volunteer for this November's initiative, had moved to Alaska two weeks before the 1990 measure was passed.

"I thought at the time that it was a vast conspiracy to make my life miserable," she deadpans.

At the Free Hemp in Alaska phone bank, upstairs from the campaign office, Lewis places calls to potential supporters. She learned of the initiative when campaign workers went to Kinko's, where she worked, to make copies of literature.

"The word `hemp' did catch my eye because I have, um, friends who may or may not be occasional smokers," Lewis says. "I'm not admitting to anything."

Sean Smeeden places phone calls at another table, soliciting contributions of time and money. He is 16. When he and some buddies got busted for setting fire to a trash can, police found marijuana in his coat pocket. He is working off his community-service sentence by volunteering at the campaign. He has promised his mother not to smoke pot until he turns 18.

"The arrest has been positive for me," he says. "If I hadn't been arrested, I probably wouldn't be volunteering here."

Easy path to ballot

Anders, the guy in charge, is a political organizer for the Libertarian Party who moved to Alaska three years ago from Indiana. In an effort to register libertarian-leaning voters, he started the marijuana initiative in the summer of 1999, never really believing he could amass the 21,000 signatures needed to get it on the November 2000 ballot.

Almost every day, he strapped a folding table to the back of his bicycle and rode to locations in Anchorage where he would solicit signatures. He gathered 13,000 by himself and realized he had something special going.

By January, six months before the deadline, the campaign had gathered 41,000 signatures - double what was needed to get the initiative on the ballot.

"I smoke marijuana very little," Anders says. "Just at night sometimes to help me relax."

Another campaign officer is Sil DeChellis, a 62-year-old who sold his tattoo parlor and music emporium in Yreka, Calif., to help the Alaska cause by becoming campaign treasurer.

DeChellis has smoked pot daily for 44 years. He says it helped him quit smoking cigarettes and swear off alcohol 22 years ago. He also credits marijuana for helping his health, particularly his stomach ulcers.

His parents, who were born in Italy, have never touched the stuff, but they know their son is an enduring pothead. "They also know I'm a better man smoking pot than I ever was as an alcoholic," he says.

Anders and DeChellis are assisted by Mitchell, who moved from Everett in May to help organize. To him, the campaign is "not about us smoking pot - it's about keeping the pigs from taking good people to prison." Mitchell met some of those people in federal prison, where he served four years for selling marijuana. He lambastes NORML for taking a measured approach to marijuana reform.

"They've got a 20-year plan, and I've got buddies in prison for pot," he says.

Keith Stroup, NORML founder and executive director, says the group now supports the Alaska initiative, figuring it could inspire a movement in other states. The group had musician Willie Nelson, an avowed pothead, tape radio commercials supporting the initiative.

But Stroup still has misgivings.

The law would conflict with federal law if the state began to regulate marijuana sales as it does alcohol, and federal law likely would prevail, he says. Choosing his words diplomatically, he also says the section calling for a panel to examine reparations for ex-cons is "language that is intemperate strategically."

"I think somebody got a little carried away," Stroup says. "It's easy to find fault with a word here or an attitude there, but this law essentially says it is no longer a crime to possess, use, cultivate or sell marijuana. And that's a very important statement."

Stuart Eskenazi's telephone message number is 206-464-2293.

His e-mail address is seskenazi@seattletimes.com.