Two Southeast communities want more access to marijuana — if the state will allow.
Sitka and Petersburg have each requested the state relax its 500-foot buffer zone between marijuana businesses and protected places like schools, churches and youth facilities.
It’s not that they want those businesses close, it’s that they don’t have a choice. Downtown Petersburg and downtown Sitka are geographically confined; everything is close to everything else, and a 500-foot buffer doesn’t leave space for marijuana businesses.
“I think the 500-foot setbacks are unfairly restrictive to the needs of small southeast Alaska communities and particularly other small communities in Alaska,” said Jeigh Stanton Gregor, a member of the Petersburg Borough Assembly and chairman of the borough’s marijuana committee. “A 200-foot setback, speaking just for Petersburg, gives us a lot more options in the downtown area.”
Petersburg’s Assembly approved a letter to the state on Jan. 7, and Sitka approved a similar letter a week later.
In the Baranof Island community, as in Petersburg, churches and schools dot the downtown landscape, creating an overlapping network of buffer zones that block the Alaska Marijuana Control Board from issuing a license for a business. The only viable locations with a 500-foot buffer are away from downtown.
Juneau, even though it has a dense downtown district, doesn’t have nearly the same problem, according to maps provided by the City and Borough of Juneau’s Community Development Department.
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church is the closest “protected” location to the core of downtown Juneau, and under the rules applied by the state, business lots from Second and Franklin streets southward are out of the buffer zone. On Seward Street, the buffer-free area begins at Third Street and stretches south.
Bruce Schulte, chairman of the Alaska Marijuana Control Board, said Petersburg and Sitka may be out of luck if they’re expecting a fast solution to their request. The board, which will meet in Juneau on Feb. 11, has no plans to add the buffer zone issue to its agenda at that meeting, and he expects the board to be consumed with other issues for much of the rest of the year.
There’s also a potential federal snare lurking in the legal landscape. The federal Safe and Drug-Free Schools Act mandates extra criminal penalties for anyone possessing illegal drugs within 1,000 feet of a school.
Marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, and in 2012, that fact encouraged a federal judge in Colorado to shut down a series of medical marijuana businesses within that distance.
Even after the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, those states have generally adopted a 1,000-foot buffer, with a few exceptions.
