Two pieces of marijuana legislation -- one that would create a Marijuana Control Board and a second that would clarify municipal marijuana regulations -- were heard in the Alaska Legislature on Friday afternoon in the final days of the regular session.

The Marijuana Control Board bill, House Bill 123, was moved out of the Senate Finance Committee on Friday afternoon after public testimony.

The bill includes a fiscal note for $1.57 million that would allow for expansion of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board’s staff and resources. The Marijuana Control Board would share the ABC Board’s staff and director. 

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Anchorage police said Friday they will target drivers high on marijuana through the weekend and Monday in anticipation of the unofficial stoners holiday “420."

“With the recent legalization of recreational use of marijuana in the state of Alaska, police anticipate a possible increase of impaired drivers that may be celebrating the ‘420 holiday’ this year,” said Anchorage Police Department communications director Jennifer Castro in a news release.

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“The origin of the term ‘420’ usually depends on who you ask but is celebrated by marijuana consumers around the world every April 20,” the release says.

The OUI (operating under the influence) marijuana detail will begin Friday evening and continue through Monday, police said.

Last November, voters decided it was time for Alaska to take a more sensible, reality-based approach to marijuana. They replaced the failed policy of prohibition with a mandate that the state regulate and tax marijuana similarly to how we treat alcohol. Yet, with only days left in the legislative session, the Legislature has yet to provide the resources needed to establish a regulatory framework.

A fundamental bill for establishing regulations over marijuana in Alaska passed the House today. The bipartisan vote is a step towards the Alcoholic Beverages Control Board creating a permit structure for all components of a full legal market.

Barrow Democrat Benjamin Nageak told colleagues during a House floor session there are some basic reasons marijuana needs its own regulatory board.

“I mean jeez, every time I see high people I go over, because I want to laugh,” Nageak said, illiciting chuckles from around the chamber. “I think we need to have a separate board to have, ya know, happy versus versus unhappy people.”

We know the end is coming, but pot prohibition is going to have to be undone state by state. Here are the ones least likely to jump on the bandwagon.

Marijuana prohibition in the US is dying, but it isn't going to vanish in one fell swoop. Even if Congress were to repeal federal pot prohibition, state laws criminalizing the plant and its users would still be in effect—at least in some states.

And it's probably a pretty safe bet that Congress isn’t going to act until a good number of states, maybe more than half, have already legalized it. That process is already underway and is likely to gather real momentum by the time election day 2016 is over.

A  worker at a Louisville, Colorado, dispensary handles bags of marijuana delivered March 27 by CannaRabbit. Couriers do more than carry pot for the state's network of more than 800 growers, manufacturers, dispensers and laboratories. The industry remains mostly cash only as federally chartered banks have been hesitant to extend loans for trade that U.S. authorities may see as against the law.

At a farm in the foothills of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, Corey Young tucks his client's marijuana into a shoebox-sized container in an unmarked white van and heads out on the road.

"We don't want to be going through a small town and have someone see bins in the back," said Young, a founder of courier service CannaRabbit. "We do not want to stick out at all."

Retired Silicon Valley engineer Angelo Mallol, 56, turned out Sunday for a seminar on how to start a small business – in the pot trade.

He asked questions as instructor Gerry Bedore of the Cannabis Career Institute spoke about emerging opportunities for entrepreneurs wanting to enter California’s medical marijuana market and cash in on a likely 2016 state ballot initiative to legalize recreational pot use.

The Cannabis Career Institute, founded by a Los Angeles marijuana activist and pot deliveryman known as “The Cannabis Warrior,” held a daylong Sacramento program on how to open cannabis businesses, from niche bakeries and organic gardens to marijuana distribution services.

In “Weed the People,” Bainbridge Island author Bruce Barcott delivers a thorough and entertaining survey of the burgeoning legalization of marijuana in the U.S. Barcott appears April 15 at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Co.

‘Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America’ by Bruce Barcott Time, Inc., 400 pp., $22.95

The public has kept a watchful eye on the marijuana crime bill circulating in Alaska’s Legislature, but regulators and industry supporters say another piece of legislation in the works is far more important to the creation of a regulated marijuana industry.

Currently in the House Judiciary Committee, House Bill 123 would create a Marijuana Control Board tasked with crafting regulations and ensuring that marijuana businesses work within those laws.

The bill also contains an essential aspect of regulating the burgeoning industry: money.

The first time I ever smoked weed, I was a passenger in a moving car.

I am not proud of that fact. It’s something I tried very hard to forget I’d ever done. Let’s be clear (not that many young, impressionable folks will likely read the newspaper, though they should, while they are a-gittin’ off my lawn): intoxicants and motor vehicles aren’t just a bad mix. They’re criminal, reckless, and dangerous. Since that time, I’ve written and reported on the consequences of those actions enough to have seen and heard and smelled how close I was (without realizing it) to a grisly, horrible death.

Then I caught a distant whiff of the familiar smell, outside an upbeat meeting of marijuana fans shortly after the vote, and the memory of my previous stupidity came wafting back.