Pubdate: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 Source: Alaska Dispatch News (AK) Copyright: 2014 Alaska Dispatch Publishing Contact: http://www.adn.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/18 Note: Anchorage Daily News until July '14 Author: Rosey Fletcher-Grunwaldt Note: Rosey Fletcher-Grunwaldt won bronze in the women's snowboarding parallel giant slalom event at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. LEGALIZED MARIJUANA INDUSTRY IS WRONG FOR ALASKA I love Alaska. I was born here; and I trained here. I was so proud to represent the United States and Alaska in the Winter Olympics and share my snowboarding medal with the entire state upon my return. Now I am very happy to raise my family here. Throughout my life I have embraced health, focus, learning, determination, and helping others to do their best. I know that to succeed, it is important to surround oneself with a supportive, positive, and healthy environment. I am very concerned about Ballot Measure 2 and the negative impacts that commercializing and industrializing marijuana would have on the entire state, especially our youth and families. This is from my friend, Ryan McDonald, in Wenatchee, Washington. I used to compete with him. I sent him the first in a series of Alaska Dispatch News articles about marijuana legalization in Washington and asked his thoughts. He wrote: "Not sure that there is any turning back now ... It is a mess." Like so many others, I am very troubled about what is going on in Colorado and Washington since the legalization of marijuana, and I am listening carefully when the Governor of Colorado and his opponent said in a recent debate that legalizing and commercializing marijuana was "reckless." For so many reasons, I am glad that I did not grow up in a state that had lots of retail marijuana stores selling marijuana infused lollipops, sweet marijuana carbonated drinks, and marijuana ice cream bars. And I am happy that I was not exposed to a lot of eye-catching marijuana advertising of marijuana, marijuana concentrates, and marijuana-infused edibles, and accessories -- in the ADN or Anchorage Press, or on street corners. I am also glad that there were not vans and buses driving around with marijuana products painted on their sides. Looking forward, I do not want my children or their friends to be bombarded by all of this either. It takes a lot to succeed, and I think we should provide a positive, healthy environment that gives our youth their best shot. I know that some of the paid and other advocates for Ballot Measure 2 might call me a prohibitionist. There has been a lot of name-calling and attacks against people who have expressed their opinion that commercialization and industrialization is the wrong approach for Alaska. But here's the deal. We don't have marijuana prohibition in Alaska. Our Supreme Court has ruled that people can use marijuana in their homes. And we have legalized medical marijuana. We do not need to adopt an extreme, Outside-funded, commercialized Colorado approach to address marijuana appropriately in our state. There are far too many problems with this extreme initiative. Finally, I have a lot of questions about this initiative. For instance, why is almost all of the funding for Ballot Measure 2 coming from outside of Alaska? I really do not understand why Outside interests are spending almost a million dollars to convince Alaskans that we should commercialize and industrialize marijuana in our state. And why does this initiative do things like legalize marijuana processing and high-potency marijuana concentrates? This is not the marijuana of the '70s, '80s or '90s. But most importantly I ask, will our children and youth be better off if this extreme initiative passes? From everything I have read and seen, I am confident that the answer to this question is "no." As Olympians, we strove to set a positive example to others. As a parent and citizen, I continue to try to do the same. That is why I am voting no on Ballot Measure 2. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom