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novapsycheAlaska Court Ruling Sparks Hope for Pot Advocates
Alaska may be moving closer to legalizing marijuana, advocates of the drug said on Wednesday, after an appeals court cited constitutional privacy protections in throwing out a drug possession conviction.
Alaska, a vast but thinly populated state with an eclectic mix of conservative and liberal politics, had been the only U.S. state to allow recreational marijuana use until 1990, when a ballot initiative outlawed smoking the plant, a mild hallucinogen.
Last Friday a state appeals court ruled the arrest and conviction of a Fairbanks-area man violated a 1975 Alaska Supreme Court ruling, the Ravin decision, which declared that the state had no right to prosecute people for possession and use of small amounts of marijuana in their own homes.
That privacy right supersedes the 1990 voter initiative that re-criminalized marijuana, the appeals court decided.
"When a statute conflicts with a provision of our state constitution, the statute must give way," the ruling said.
Alaska may be moving closer to legalizing marijuana, advocates of the drug said on Wednesday, after an appeals court cited constitutional privacy protections in throwing out a drug possession conviction.
Alaska, a vast but thinly populated state with an eclectic mix of conservative and liberal politics, had been the only U.S. state to allow recreational marijuana use until 1990, when a ballot initiative outlawed smoking the plant, a mild hallucinogen.
Last Friday a state appeals court ruled the arrest and conviction of a Fairbanks-area man violated a 1975 Alaska Supreme Court ruling, the Ravin decision, which declared that the state had no right to prosecute people for possession and use of small amounts of marijuana in their own homes.
That privacy right supersedes the 1990 voter initiative that re-criminalized marijuana, the appeals court decided.
"When a statute conflicts with a provision of our state constitution, the statute must give way," the ruling said.