Smoking Alaska

From Yahoo:
"Alaska becomes 3rd state with legal marijuana"

Smoking, growing and possessing marijuana becomes legal in America's wildest state Tuesday, thanks to a voter initiative aimed at clearing away 40 years of conflicting laws and court rulings. Making Alaska the third state to legalize recreational marijuana was the goal of a coalition including libertarians, rugged individualists and small-government Republicans who prize the privacy rights enshrined in the state's constitution. Meanwhile, Alaska Native leaders worry that legalization will bring new temptations to communities already confronting high rates of drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence and suicide. Initiative backers promised Native leaders that communities could still have local control under certain conditions. Alaska law gives every community the option to regulate alcohol locally. From northern Barrow to Klawock, 1,291 miles away in southeast Alaska, 108 communities impose local limits on alcohol, and 33 of them ban it altogether. But the initiative did not provide clear opt-out language for tribal councils and other smaller communities, forcing each one to figure out how to proceed Tuesday. November's initiative also bans smoking in public, but didn't define what that means, and lawmakers left the question to the alcohol regulatory board, which planned to meet early Tuesday to discuss an emergency response. As of Tuesday, adult Alaskans can not only keep and use pot, they can transport, grow it and give it away. A second phase, creating a regulated and taxed marijuana market, won't start until 2016 at the earliest. And while possession is no longer a crime under state law, enjoying pot in public can bring a $100 fine.

 

 

^ I've been to Alaska and it seems the majority of people up there are former-hippies who were kicked-out of the lower 48. It doesn't surprise me that they would legalize marijuana. I think marijuana should only be legal for medical uses. I know many states are making medical marijuana legal, but they are doing so very slowly and making it so that those who are sick and need it to help ease their pain wait in agony. ^

http://news.yahoo.com/alaska-becomes-3rd-state-legal-marijuana-230029888.html