The Kenai Peninsula Borough’s Marijuana Task Force is working to create local regulations, mainly addressing home extraction and a governing authority for licenses at this week’s meeting.
Task Force Member Dolly Phelps said discussion continued on an already completed recommendation that the Planning and Zoning Commission be the local regulatory body.
Phelps: “Does the Planning and Zoning Commission want to then take on the responsibility of issuing licenses for people if the state board has exceeded the time, which was 90-days, of submission. If the board did not respond within the 90-days, it would then fall to the individual municipalities. So there were questions about whether our borough was set up to do that or is capable of doing that so I think they’re going to do a little bit of a study in the zoning commission.”
The Planning and Zoning Commission is working to distinguish 12 different geographic zoning areas, including residential.
Task force members discussed banning marijuana cultivation in private homes, which Phelps says she opposes.
Phelps: “In order to get rid of our black market, we have to allow them to become a legal market. And if you’re going to ban their ability to do that in their homes you’re going to, in essence, protect the black market in our area.”
No action was taken on that discussion.
The task force majority voted to suggest a ban of home-made marijuana concentrates created with gases known as Butane Hash Oil.
The next KPB Marijuana Task Force meeting will be held on October 29.