With the primary election over, efforts on both sides of the marijuana debate are ramping up for the November general election.
Alaska’s laws are not black and white when it comes to pot, and one Anchorage business owner hopes to cash in on the legal gray area.
Robert Martin owns Southside Garden Supply, which has three stores in Spenard, South Anchorage and Muldoon.
Martin said two months ago, he started carrying cannnabidiol-infused products from HempMed.
CBD comes from cannabis, but it’s different from tetrahydrocannabinol, the compound that gets marijuana users high.
“I hadn’t seen where they were available anywhere in Anchorage, and because they’re legal in all 50 states, I thought someone should represent one of the CBD manufacturers,” said Martin. “We found out from our travels abroad that, yeah, they could be sold.”
That’s not exactly true, said Jodie Underwood, a federal Drug Enforcement Agency spokesperson.
Underwood said because CBD comes from marijuana, the sale of it is illegal.
But Andrew Hard, a HempMed spokesperson, pointed to a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said DEA cannot regulate “non-psychoactive hemp products.”
Some medical marijuana patients say CBD helps with seizures and spasms. But to get medical-grade CBD, you need a doctor to sign off — which users say is a challenge in Alaska, because the laws are not clear-cut.
They hope Ballot Measure 2 will change that.
“We certainly have compassion for folks that find comfort in medical marijuana, whatever the product may be, but that’s not what Ballot Measure 2 is about,” said Kristina Woolston, a spokesperson for the group Big Marijuana, Big Mistake, Vote No on 2. “This is an extreme measure funded by an Outside organization that seeks to commercialize and industrialize and bring retail marijuana industry to Alaska.”
Backers of the ballot measure say passing it would help medical marijuana users.
“I think any other sort of reaction to this by the ‘Vote No’ group just shows the lengths they’re willing to go to scare and confuse Alaska voters,” said Taylor Bickford, a spokesperson for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana in Alaska. “I think any effort in Alaska to increase access to medical marijuana is a very good thing. The Journal of the American Medical Association just came out this week with a study that shows that any increased access to medicinal marijuana can lead to a decrease in overdose deaths from prescription drugs for example.”
As both sides lobby for votes, Martin hopes to fill a niche demand.
Anchorage garden supply store sells cannabis products
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