JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska regulators were poised Thursday to award the first licenses for legal marijuana businesses in the state, another milestone for the fledgling industry.
Priority is being given to growing and testing operations to ensure that retail stores, once authorized, will have legal product to sell. The Marijuana Control Board could issue its first retail licenses in about three months, which Cynthia Franklin, director of the Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office, has said coincides with a crop life.
Thirty applications are up for consideration during Thursday’s Marijuana Control Board meeting. Two of those are for testing facilities. The rest are for grow operations.
Testing facilities will play an important role in the industry, with cultivators and processors needing to have their product tested for such things as potency and potential toxins.
It’s not yet clear how many testing facilities the industry will need because it’s not clear how much product will be tested, board chairman Bruce Schulte said in an interview Wednesday. Alaska needs at least one functioning lab, he said.
“Whether the right number is two or four or one, that remains to be seen,” he said.
Both of the businesses up for consideration of testing licenses Thursday are in Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city. But for businesses in communities not connected to the road system — accessible by air and/or water — getting samples to a lab in Anchorage could be tricky. While cannabis has been legalized in Alaska, it is still prohibited under federal law.
Schulte said that’s a problem but he said the board hasn’t been involved in how businesses should go about getting their product tested. The board just wants to know that it has been tested and meets quality standards, he said.
Jeremy Woodrow, a spokesman for the state ferry system, said the system is in a tough spot because it’s regulated by the U.S. Coast Guard but it’s trying to be as lenient as possible within the confines of the state law. The system has allowed marijuana that meets personal use limits of one ounce or less but use on board is banned and any larger amounts could be reported to the Coast Guard, he said.
The system isn’t telling anyone not to bring cannabis on board but anyone who does so needs to know the risk, he said.
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