Deadline Approaching for Deciding on Marijuana Regulations

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

Time is almost up for the City of Kodiak and Kodiak Island Borough to decide how marijuana businesses should look in their areas. The city council and borough assembly updated each other on their progress at their joint work session last week. Each body has a committee to advise it on regulation for marijuana business and cultivation.

At the work session, Borough Mayor Dan Rohrer, who sits on the Borough Marijuana Task Force, explained the deadline for the local opt-out of marijuana is the end of February, so they’ve told the state the borough will make its decisions for regulation by the end of that month.

He said, so far, the Task Force has presented its recommendations, but the assembly will dedicate an entire work session to the suggestions next week.

On the city side, the opt-out ordinance expires on January 1, but the City Marijuana Task Force still has to discuss buffer zones and testing. It will meet again in January to do that.

One issue city councilman John Whiddon brought up is a difference between the recommendations of the city and borough advisory committees on the issue of edibles.

“At least from what I can understand from the city’s recommendation was there’s an acceptance of the need to have edibles as a viable product because, in essence, it seemed to be that was  really probably the highest profit margin area would be on edibles, where the borough seems to have some real concerns about edibles.”

Whiddon said he didn’t want to see the borough and city pitted against each other in a case such as this one, where edibles might be available inside city limits but not outside them.

He also said he wants to see Kodiak put public safety over commercial value. In the past, edibles have been marketed using wrappers similar to popular candy brands, which could potentially confuse children.

Rohrer explained, when the task force was looking at state law, that influenced the committee’s decision.

“On the edible side, there was terminology for example that said, you know, edibles can’t look like any other item. Well, everything looks like something else. So, there was a safety side concern of it, but there was also that definability side of it, and so ultimately the conclusion of the task force was to recommend opting out of just the edible portions for a period of time.”

He said the task-force decided it could let the state work out the particulars and follow its example at a later time.

Based on the borough and city’s opt-out ordinances, they will have the next couple of months to work out how they imagine marijuana business will look on the island.

The assembly’s next work session, where they’ll talk about the task force’s recommendations, is set for Thursday of next week and a date for the city marijuana advisory committee has not yet been set.