Alaska cannabis businesses can sell you a hoodie, so long as the transaction is being recorded in high-definition.

The Alaska Marijuana Control Board covered allowable advertising strategies or retail dispensaries, as well as security protocol last week, on the second day of an extra meeting to consider draft regulations.

Board Director Cynthia Franklin argued Montana's greatest mistake was allowing too much advertising for medical marijuana. Montana legalized medicinal marijuana in 2004 only to have a ballot initiative introduced in 2014 to recriminalize it. This followed a ballooning industry that roused the ire of the state legislators and a 36 percent minority of the population who hadn't supported legal medicinal marijuana in the first place.

While Arkansas voters are not for completely legalizing marijuana, they are overwhelmingly supportive of a restrictive usage of marijuana for medical purposes, according to a new Talk Business & Politics/Hendrix College/Impact Management Group survey.

In the latest poll of 400 registered voters conducted on Aug. 20-23, 2015, 84% said they agreed with legalizing marijuana for medical purposes.

Q: Do you agree or disagree that adults should be allowed to legally use marijuana for medical purposes if a physician prescribes it?

56% Strongly Agree (84% Agree)
28% Somewhat Agree
3% Somewhat Disagree (14% Disagree)
11% Strongly Disagree
2% Don’t Know

Shawn, a chef (and expert punster), wonders whether Alaska cannabis regulators have considered his industry as they're setting the initial boundaries of the legal market.

“I would like to know how they plan to address edibles and establishments that sell them. Are they going to allow a restaurant or dinner club that is an adult atmosphere like a bar, 21 and over, to serve cannabis-infused foods? I'm a chef and I think that we should have opportunity to stake our claim in this 'budding' marijuana industry.”

Alaska’s forthcoming cannabis regulations might stop homegrown bud businesses from seeing a dime from the hot-ticket marijuana investment scene developing in the Lower 48.

Outside investment raises both industry and regulatory hackles in the Alaska cannabis scene, either as the surefire road to a federal crackdown or the harbinger of boutique-killing Big Marijuana, depending on who is asked.

Due to federal law, Alaska banks and credit unions refuse to handle cannabis-related accounts or loans. Cannabis businesses without their own startup capital have few options for funding beyond bootstrapping or borrowing from private lenders.

In states where marijuana is legal, a new wedding trend is popping up: open weed bars. How do we get invited? 


Twenty-eight years after Bob Marley romanticized marijuana, the drug has earned top billing in the ultimate love-fest: weddings. 

In Washington, Colorado, Alaska, and Oregon—the four states where it’s recreationally legal —“weed weddings” have gone from a fun idea to a lucrative reality. Through sites like Cannabride.com and LoveandMarij.com ganja-loving bridges and grooms can find everything from 420-focused caterers to kush-pushing florists.

Marijuana industry advocates are crying foul about a residency clause in Alaska's draft marijuana regulations that would require all business owners and investors to be Alaska residents.

With the deadline for crafting Alaska marijuana regulations just three months away, the Marijuana Control Board must decide whether the requirement -- which board member Brandon Emmett said "basically crushes the American dream" -- is the best choice for a fledgling market teeming with risk.  

Without reconciliation of banking laws at a federal level, local businesses, such as those popping up in Alaska, will need security to handle cash.

Like a gold rush, Alaska's upcoming green rush will bring stacks of specie and currency, along with a version of the Pinkertons to guard the loot.

Federal banking laws prohibit federally- or state-chartered banks and credit unions from accepting marijuana deposits or giving marijuana loans. The disparity between federal law and states that have legalized the product creates a unique security risk, as it consigns every cannabis grower, retailer, and broker to a cash-only business model ripe for theft or robbery. Alaska is catching on to a trend of cannabis business security that is rapidly growing in the Lower 48.

If Colorado or Washington police pull you over and find more than 5 nanograms of the mind-altering ingredient of marijuana per milliliter of blood in your system, you're guilty of stoned driving – whether you smoked three days ago or three hours ago.

And you could lose your license.

Not so in Oregon. In this state, so far at least, there's no established limit for the amount of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, you can have in your blood before you are presumed to be impaired while driving.

HOUSTON — Voters in Houston will join those in Palmer to decide whether or not marijuana will be commercially available in local stores this fall.

Voters in both communities voted to approve statewide Ballot Measure Two, which legalized the drug in 2014. Houston was the community that voted to approve marijuana by the widest margin of local municipalities: 14 percent. In Palmer, voters gave less full-throated support, approving legalization by a four-percent margin.

The cannabis industry’s growing pains are causing unease for some stakeholders, even as the newly minted Alaska Marijuana Control Board was able to favorably change certain draft regulations.

The Alaska Marijuana Control Board decided on several changes to the draft regulations for the budding cannabis industry during its second meeting Aug. 10-11. The board set a license fee of $5,000, left an open window for Outside investment dollars, liberalized key cannabis business zoning requirements, removed a requirement for license holders to list their family members’ information on license applications and estimated the number of licenses for cannabis businesses.