Jack Tame: Legal weed coup one state at a time

Alaska has become the third US state to legalise recreational weed. Photo / AP

Opinion

They can't grow good weed in Alaska.

Apparently. So I've heard.

It's just too cold and too complicated and, because most marijuana in the US is grown and smuggled up from Mexico, pharmacological journals estimate it's 10 times cheaper to buy wholesale pot in Texas than in the far north.

Apart from Hawaii, marijuana is actually more expensive in Alaska than anywhere else in America. It really goes to show what 5000km will sting you at Caltex.

I've been traipsing around the "Last Frontier" state for a few days. It feels like one big mining town, a weird mix of spectacular mountain ranges, frozen rivers and diesel fumes.

But, despite Alaska having made history last week as the third US state to legalise recreational weed, I can confidently report that I'm yet to catch a whiff of a single spliff there.

It's not that I expected to, really. In Colorado, where they've been legally selling pot for more than a year, you can smell the enormous hydroponics warehouses from half a kilometre down the street.

But Alaska isn't selling it yet. Not for another nine months.

For the time being, its residents can grow, smoke and share. They just can't stock up at the local mall.

What's extraordinary about this development is that it passed with almost no fanfare.

Alaska is a staunchly Republican state - albeit with a blazing libertarian streak - where public TVs are always tuned to Fox News and Sarah Palin is a treasure.

Although many other conservative US states maintain archaic marijuana punishments and you can still be jailed for limited possession, people here voted to legalise it once and for all.

In Anchorage, I got talking to a guy with a cowboy hat and a stars-and-stripes pin on his chest.

"You know what?" he said, when I asked about the new laws. "I honestly think people here just quit caring."

A decade, we reckoned, before the whole US follows suit. The last frontier, indeed.

Jack Tame is on Newstalk ZB, Saturdays, 9am-midday.