Hundreds of people across Alaska are trying to figure out how to sell pot. Just over a month ago, the state opened up the permit process for businesses hoping to grow, process, and sell cannabis products, and applications continue to pour in.
As part of an on-going series, we’re looking at one prospective businesswoman, Jane Stinson of Enlighten Alaska, LLC, to find out what that application process is like.
“That’s Mason, and that’s Bailey,” Stinson said, pointing to two barking dogs as she opened the door to her South Anchorage home.
Stinson shows me what would be a beautiful granite kitchen counter if it weren’t buried under heaps of paper, page after page of her application to open a retail cannabis shop.
“It’s where I do it all,” Stinson said.
She’s been working on the application for nine months. It is not a simple process. Pulling up the state’s website for navigating the permit application, Stinson shows fields and tabs asking for information that officials with the state’s Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office want to know as they weigh whether to grant business permits.
“They ask a lot of questions about security, safety,” Stinson explained. They cover the entire gamut of any business that would go into retail or manufacturing, they are collecting all the data that they need to make a decision.”
That data gets really specific. The state wants to see that plans are in place for how cannabis products are handled, all the way down to protocols for transporting the product. One of the biggest components is all the security services prospective owners have to line up as they figure out a business plan.
“That’s the interesting part: all these ancillary businesses and the ones who are actually going to be touching the plant are all trying to figure it out together,” Stinson said. “There are a lot of businesses that are cropping up to support those needs.”
Though the application is complicated, Stinson thinks it’s fair, and that the state has done a good job with it.
As of March 30th, the most recent date for updated figures, 177 cannabis applications have been formally initiated, with dozens more started. Business locations stretch from Ketchikan to Nome. The highest concentration, however, is in the retail and industrial zones within the Anchorage Bowl.
Five completed applications are under review by AMCO right now–all of them for grow operations between Fairbanks and Soldotna. The state is prioritizing permits for growers, so they can get started producing legal cannabis for shops like Stinson’s to sell a few months later.
It’s like authorizing farmers to plant their crops before letting any super-markets open. Which puts Stinson in the position of planning a retail business without knowing the products that’ll be on the shelves.
“We are really anxious,” Stinson said. “Truly we just have no idea what can be done out there, where the expertise is, who knows what, and who’s gonna produce the best product.”
It’s a lot of risk to shoulder with so many major factors still unknown. The fee to apply with the state is $1,000, and then if Enlighten Alaska is approved it’ll be another $5,000 for the permit itself. All of that pales in comparison to what Stinson and her partners have spent so far on things like legal fees and real-estate.
“We’ve invested over $50,000 already, just preparing for this,” Stinson said. “it’s a lot.”
This is just for state approval. Locally, the municipality of Anchorage will also need to approve of the business plan and sign off on it. The city won’t start assessing applications until they’re approved and passed along by AMCO. Deputy Clerk Amanda Moser said the municipality’s permit application will be basically a “copy-and-paste” version of the state’s, and won’t require much additional work.
The process involves meetings with community groups near the business site. Stinson made her first presentation to the Spenard Community Council last week during a special meeting.
“It went very well, it was very well received,” she said.
“It just gets easier every day, I mean it really does, because you just talk about it more and more and people get more comfortable with it.”
As Stinson and her business partners get ready for more community council meetings, she’s optimistic they’ll get through the technical hurdles.
Zachariah Hughes reports on city & state politics, arts & culture, drugs, and military affairs in Anchorage and South Central Alaska.
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