Marijuana Policy Project

Local Fairbanks leaders and the nation's deputy drug czar came together in a Thursday morning press conference to lambast the ballot proposal to legalize marijuana.

Scott Burns, the deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the other attendees argued that legal marijuana would harm Alaska's youth and businesses and dampen the Department of Defense's desire to post troops in the state.

"Being the first in the country to do this could have all kinds of repercussions," Burns said.

Ballot Measure 2 would make it legal for people 21 and older to grow, use, sell or give away marijuana, which could be taxed and regulated by the state. It's on the Nov. 2 state ballot.

Burns was joined at the conference by representatives of law enforcement agencies, including Fairbanks Police Director Paul Harris and Harvey L. Goehring, Alaska's top federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent; and local officials, including Fairbanks City Mayor Steve Thompson and Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly members Bonnie Williams and Garry Hutchison. Margaret Russell, chair of the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce board of directors, also spoke at the event, held in the Fairbanks City Council chambers.

Burns argued that passage of the measure would contribute to a trend of kids trying marijuana at younger and younger ages, calling smoking pot a "middle-school rite of passage."

Burns also stressed that much of the money being used to tout the initiative came from the Washington D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project, a group he argued wants to make it the first step toward legalizing further drugs. And he also argued that the U.S. military might look less fondly on Alaska if it had legal marijuana. Tim Hinterberger, an associate professor for the University of Alaska Anchorage's biomedical program and a sponsor of Ballot Measure 2 dismissed that argument as a "scare tactic."

Hinterberger defended the MPP as only interested in marijuana, and noted that Burns is an out-of-stater as well. Hinterberger also argued that Burns was making his point for him when he pointed out how many youths use tobacco. The solution, he argued, is to regulate marijuana rather than spending money to prohibit it.

"What we're doing now, we're saying, is not working," he said. "So how about trying something different?"

Other speakers on Thursday argued against the initiative for a number of reasons, such as its potential to cause businesses and tourists to shy away from Alaska. Harris argued the public good entailed in banned marijuana trumps the right to privacy cited by initiative backers.

"This is not a privacy issue; it is a public safety, it is a public health issue," he said.

Burns is on a two-stop tour of Alaska that was meant to focus on several issues until the ballot initiative jumped to the fore. "This topic has kind of taken over as the emerging theme of this trip."

Thompson said he plans to introduce a resolution in opposition to the ballot measure in the Fairbanks City Council, while Williams said she and others have one in the works for the borough assembly as well. The borough school board has also discussed one, while the Chamber of Commerce has passed one already.

Russell said the chamber has also raised about $4,000 from local businesses to contribute to the effort to fight the measure.