Get ready, Alaska! Regulators are gearing up to award first pot licenses
JUNEAU, Alaska 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 Thursdays 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.
Its not yet clear how many testing facilities the industry will need because its 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, Alaskas 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 marijuana has been legalized in Alaska, it is still prohibited under federal law.
Schulte said thats a problem but he said the ...
