Part of an occasional series In emergency medicine, naloxone is as close to a miracle drug as they come. Usually sold under the name Narcan, the medication can instantly yank a person near death out of an opiate overdose. Paramedics around Alaska use it almost daily to revive overdose patients they encounter slumped in cars, on couches or in public bathrooms. In Anchorage alone, firefighters administered 352 doses last year. Some in Alaska think the medication should be in the hands of more people, so families and friends of addicts are equipped to quickly stop overdoses themselves. They envision a world where Narcan could be picked up at the drugstore and stored in a heroin addict's bathroom cabinet, the way the family of someone suffering from a severe peanut allergy might keep an EpiPen around. [continues 883 words]
Six people have died of heroin overdoses in the Alaska capital since February, reflecting a growing crisis across the state and nation. Some Alaskans, including the police, say the time has come for a new approach. First in an occasional series JUNEAU -- Heroin's grip on Juneau can be felt in ways both plain and subtle. A decade of rising abuse can be seen in syringes and foil squares dropped on dog-walking paths and in parking lots. In grandparents raising toddlers their children are too addicted to care for. [continues 3023 words]
Heroin is taking a unprecedented toll on Alaska, with deaths, overdoses and medical costs sharply rising, according to a new report by the state Division of Public Health. The 18-page report, released Tuesday, details the dimensions of the problem. It comes a week after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the similarly staggering results of their own survey of heroin and opiate use nationwide. Related: After a daughter's heroin overdose, a mother's grief Among the findings in the Alaska report: [continues 693 words]
The authors of a proposed Anchorage ordinance expanding open-container laws to marijuana want you to keep your cannabis in the trunk of your car. Anchorage Assembly members Ernie Hall and Amy Demboski will introduce four proposed ordinances at Tuesday's Assembly meeting that touch on the finer points of marijuana regulation, from defining "personal cultivation" to possession of cannabis in limousines. A chance for the public to weigh in will come later. The proposed ordinances are largely "housekeeping" matters of bringing municipal code into alignment with state statute, Hall said. [continues 472 words]
A new set of recommendations from the state regulatory agency charged with managing legal marijuana offers a window into what policymakers are currently thinking about how Alaska's nascent pot industry should run. Staffers of the state Alcoholic Beverage Control division prepared the report, called "Preliminary Considerations for Implementation of AS 17.38," said Cynthia Franklin, the head of the agency. The ABC Board endorsed its release, she said. The recommendations, which lean heavily on the experience of Colorado in regulating a commercial pot industry, cover everything from serving sizes of marijuana edibles to local control. [continues 253 words]
The administration of Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan on Tuesday introduced a measure to the Assembly that would make extracting marijuana concentrates with flammable solvents, such as butane, illegal in Anchorage without permission from authorities. The proposed ordinance amends municipal code to prevent "the extraction of (THC) or any cannabinoid by use of materials or methods deemed dangerous to public health and safety, unless otherwise permitted by law." The measure would make this type of extraction a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. [continues 86 words]
For Anchorage police, legal pot will mean changes big and small. On Feb. 24, possessing small amounts of marijuana for recreational use will become legal in Alaska, thanks to a ballot measure supported by voters in November. As the date approaches, the Anchorage Police Department is working out the mechanics of a new legal landscape, where smoking pot on a city sidewalk leads to a ticket, not a criminal case. Some of those changes involve practical matters, like deciding whether public-consumption tickets will be paper or electronic. [continues 853 words]
Alaska moved one big step closer Tuesday to a public vote on legalizing marijuana. On Tuesday, a ballot initiative campaign to decriminalize and regulate pot reached the signature threshold necessary under state election law to put the issue on the Aug. 19 primary ballot. If the measure passes, Alaska would become the third state in the nation, after Colorado and Washington, to allow cannabis for recreational use. Backers modeled the proposed initiative after Colorado's new law, which regulates and taxes marijuana similarly to alcohol. [continues 722 words]
On Wednesday night, those in Anchorage will have a chance to hear from Ethan Nadelmann, the man known as the single most influential architect of the decades-long movement to decriminalize pot -- a movement that's been picking up steam in recent years with legalization victories in Washington and Colorado. A 56-year-old New Yorker with a handful of degrees from Harvard, Nadelmann is credited for engineering a national strategy that has sought to frame regulating pot sales as a generator of tax revenues and a way to refocus law enforcement on policing serious crime. Rolling Stone magazine called him "the driving force for the legalization of marijuana in America." [continues 1133 words]
Backers of a ballot initiative that could make Alaska the third state to legalize marijuana for recreational use turned in some 46,000 signatures to the state election officials Wednesday -- putting the question one step closer to the Aug. 19 ballot. The Alaska measure is modeled on the 2012 Colorado initiative that paved the way for a recreational-pot industry that threw open its doors there on Jan. 1, when the law went into effect. The backers of the Alaska initiative effort say legal marijuana is an idea whose time has come. [continues 841 words]
