Should there be a hard limit on how many retail pot shops can operate in Juneau?
A panel developing Juneau policies governing marijuana businesses wrestled with that question on Thursday.
The city planning department and most of the Juneau Marijuana Committee members said no, don’t set a limit. Let the state’s soon-to-be-written regulations, local zoning restrictions and the free market sort out the number.
“I think government spends enough time telling business how to be business,” said committee member and Juneau Assemblywoman Debbie White. “And with the licensing fees, the initial investment, the zoning, we’ve built enough road blocks.”
One of the latest road blocks the Alaska Marijuana Control Board is proposing is a 500 foot buffer around schools, recreation and youth centers.
White’s sentiment was echoed by Assemblywoman Maria Gladziszewski, and planning commissioners Mike Satre and Dennis Watson.
“I think trying to put a further cap on that, not letting the free market work may kill this altogether,” Satre said.
“You’re kind of creating an inadvertent monopoly,” Watson said. “I’m just not comfortable with capping private enterprise. I think it’s a mistake.”
Assemblyman Jesse Kiehl chairs the committee. He was an outspoken supporter of the campaign to legalize marijuana in Alaska, but was in the minority on the retail shop limit question.
“The one thing you can never do is put the genie back in the bottle,” Kiehl said. “If we were to undershoot on a number of licenses and find that demand was not met, that the black market was alive and well, it would be entirely within our power to increase the number of licenses available.
“But … once you got somebody with a business running, and they have a premises, and employees and stock on the shelves, extinguishing their license to operate is not just a tough thing to do, it’s kind of a rotten thing to do, to somebody who’s invested blood, sweat and tears — not to mention cash — into it. So I am very reluctant for us to take an unlimited approach to this new industry.”
Kiehl said it’s reasonable to follow the rhetoric of the legalization campaign: regulate pot like alcohol, which means limiting the number of marijuana stores according to population.
Carole Triem, a local who’s educated in economics and public policy, wrote a report for the committee at Kiehl’s request attempting to rationalize a number. Triem crunched data from the census, drug use surveys and commercial marijuana regulators in Colorado and Washington state.
She came up with an estimate for the minimum number retail stores needed to serve Juneau’s marijuana users. By her math, Juneau needs a minimum of six to satisfy legal demand. If there’s fewer than that, the economics push pot sales back to the black market, where tax revenue is lost and pot becomes more accessible to minors.
Free markets are great for pizza parlors, but government’s role is to intervene in markets when necessary, like to keep people safe.
— triemteam (@TriemTeam) August 14, 2015
The marijuana committee didn’t settle whether to limit the number of stores. Several members said they wanted more information or to wait and see more complete regulations from the state marijuana board.
“It will put the City and Borough of Juneau and I think members of the public interested in starting marijuana businesses in a rough spot if we delay all our decisions until we know what the state’s going to do,” Kiehl said. “That said, doesn’t do us a lot of good to make decisions and have them taken away from us, so anyone who would like to cut that Gordian Knot, please bring your knife.”
The state marijuana board has been meeting and writing draft regulations arduously to hit a Nov. 24 deadline. The Assembly’s moratorium on accepting land use applications for commercial marijuana activity expires Oct. 19, which the committee recommended extending.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Maria Gladziszewski’s last name.
