Anchorage’s Pot Luck Events is the only marijuana social club still operating without a legal challenge, as statewide puzzlement to their legality produces a patchwork of local controls.
Fairbanks’ The Higher Calling and Homer’s Kachemak Cannabis Club have both closed, and the City of Kenai is seeking an injunction against Green Rush Events.
The clubs, which allow dues-paying members to share and consume cannabis but do not sell it themselves, inhabit either a murky legal area or a clearly defined one, depending on whom you ask.
The Marijuana Control Board and several localities have asked the state to clarify the law, but the Legislature’s only action on marijuana clubs has been a statewide smoking ban that incidentally applies to marijuana clubs and has stalled in the House Judiciary Committee chaired by Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, R-Anchorage.
Marijuana social clubs are distinct from marijuana cafes. State regulations allow for onsite consumption at locations attached to retail cannabis stores. The state hasn’t yet issued any retail licenses, however, and these onsite marijuana cafes will have to wait until late 2016 to open along with the rest of the commercial marijuana industry once a legal crop is available to sell.[Read more at the Alaska Dispatch News]