Entrepreneurs in communities as far-flung as Sand Point and Coffman Cove are champing at the bit to get a marijuana business license from the State of Alaska, but interest in Haines appears to be lacking.
The Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office recently published a list of more than 200 individuals or companies who have applied for marijuana retail, cultivation, testing and manufacturing licenses. None of the applicants are based in Haines.
The list is very rudimentary, and contains only names of proposed businesses – “The Canna Cabin,” “The Great Alaskan Kush Company,” “Doobie Depot” – and the type of license sought.
About 40 applications are new and have no public notice or associated location.
Skagway has two applicants listed: Tara A. Bass for a retail marijuana store called “Remedy Shoppe” on Third Avenue, and Steven Briody and Tiffany Metz for a limited marijuana cultivation facility called “Coyote and Toad’s Garden.”
Thom Ely, chair of the Chamber of Commerce’s Marijuana Regulations Committee, said he wasn’t surprised by the lack of local applicants and speculated a niche market wouldn’t be a viable business opportunity “in our small, isolated town.”
(Individuals in Wrangell, Sitka, Petersburg, Juneau and Ketchikan have applied for various types of marijuana licenses).
Haines resident Kristine Harder, who owns a business in Skagway, said she was surprised an existing business owner in town hadn’t yet applied for a license. “If you already had an established business and could add on and make a little corner of it, there would be some income to be made,” Harder said.
Harder said she doesn’t believe Haines has the population to support a business dedicated purely to marijuana. “There is not enough business in Haines. Everybody who wants it already grows their own,” she said.
Chamber of Commerce executive director Debra Schnabel said the lack of applicants was unexpected. “Haines is a very entrepreneurial community. I’m surprised that no one has stepped forward to apply to enter a very obvious opportunity.”
Haines clearly has a market for pot, as the black market economy has been going strong for decades, Schnabel said. “I know from my own personal conversations that there are people interested in entering the market,” she said. “I think somebody will do it.”
Schnabel lays some of the blame on the chamber’s marijuana committee, which after meeting several times failed to make any specific recommendations to the Haines Borough, which would be responsible for establishing local regulations.
The committee stopped meeting in January after it agreed to make recommendations – which were more like general suggestions – for the assembly to look at the permitting, taxing and zoning aspects of local marijuana regulation.
“The recommendations were to do nothing really,” Schnabel said. “All they said was, ‘Hey, here are some of the things we’ll have to deal with,’” instead of making specific recommendations with local considerations in mind.
Instead of looking at the issue from a business perspective and how locals might want to build an economy, chamber committee members looked at it like they were government agents just trying to parse regulation. “That was the failure of the committee, that they did not take an entrepreneurial perspective,” she said.
The lack of proactive planning, Schnabel speculated, will lead to reactive “not-in-my-backyard” controversy when and if a local license is sought. “It will be the helicopter thing all over again,” she said.
The assembly has yet to take up the chamber recommendations or hold a discussion about local marijuana regulations.