Public Radio for the Central Kenai Peninsula
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Carhartts and Xtratufs Ball — get tickets here!

Prop 1 Part 1: Meet your local cannabis grower

Three years ago, voters across the state of Alaska chose to drastically change the way we deal with marijuana.

 

While a 1975 law did provide some of the most liberal pot policies in the nation, by 2014, voters had decided it was time to bring cannabis out of basements and backrooms and create a regulated marketplace. And since then, the debate has been on about whether and to what degree commercial cannabis businesses should exist on the Kenai Peninsula.

 

That debate has culminated in a vote next Tuesday on Ballot Proposition 1, asking borough residents to vote either yes, to ban commercial marijuana businesses in the borough, outside the cities of Kenai, Soldotna, Homer and Seward. Or to vote no, and keep the cannabis industry running in the unincorporated areas. In the first of a two part series looking at ballot proposition 1, KDLL’sShaylon Cochran visits with Dollynda Phelps, co-owner of Peace Frog Botanicals in Nikiski.

Tucked away in the woods, deep in Nikiski Dollynda Phelps is showing me something I’d only ever seen before in the pages of High Times magazine. Rooms full of pot. Phelps and her husband Jeff were some of the first growers in business when the regulatory dust settled last year, and cannabis business licenses started being issued.

 

After 15 years working together hanging dry wall, the prospect of venturing into a wholly new kind of business was, to use an expression, intoxicating. So they got to work remodeling their basement in the hopes of one day opening a limited growing operation. Four small rooms hold the plants in various stages of growth, a processing or trim room and the equipment used to make it all happen.

“Our theory, you know, a lot of people went in big and invested millions of dollars. We took the what can we afford, aim small miss small approach," Phelps tells me.

No debt. Working from home. And business is good.

 

They’d like to expand, but that will depend on how the vote goes on October 3rd. A vote to shutter businesses is a possibility that folks in the industry were well aware of. It was a risk, and for many seeing it through has brought a healthy financial reward, a portion of which helps fund the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District. But the vote in 2014 showed that a very slim majority of Peninsula residents were not ready for this change.

 

Now, I can’t pretend that until three years ago, I had avoided any exposure to the cannabis culture. But seeing all that weed in someone’s house is surprising. Seeing pot stores is surprising. It’s new and different and a really big change from the norm. But normalizing marijuana has been a goal for Phelps since the beginning.

“I talk about it at Home Depot, I talk about it when I go buy new carpet, I talk about it at the DMV. It’s casual conversation now. And my husband Jeff as well. He was getting tires changed. He and a couple other guys got there before the store opened and somebody asked what do you do for a living? I’m a marijuana cultivator. And it’s a little bit of a surprise at first. But guess what? We are your friends and neighbors. We’re no different than we have been the last few decades. We are still the same people.”

Phelps, along with a few others, has helped lead a small brigade of cannabis supporters to prove that point. And they have been active. They filedwith the state public offices commission, APOC. They’ve raised more than $45,000. Much of it coming from business owners. And they’ve been very public. Delivering industry updates to Chambers of Commerce and city councils, organizing community meetings, ringing door bells.

 

Phelps says people generally fall into one of three camps: Unconditional support, unconditional opposition and a third group which could decide the fate of the industry.

“And then we have the group of people who, they don’t really care two beans either way. So those are the folks that may or may not engage with us. We usually say let us take 30 seconds of your time and the conversation will either go on from there or they’ll slam the door in our face. Well, we haven’t had any slammed, but shut. And I’ve seen a tremendous amount of people who are not in support of this come to our meetings to be involved, to ask questions, to see what is really going on with it and I think we’ve gained a lot of support through that.”

She’s confident that more people have warmed to the industry than voted against it in 2014, but that alone doesn’t calm her nerves with less than a week until voters in the Borough decide if she gets to stay in business or not.

 

However the vote goes, in two years, it can be put on the ballot again. Phelps says if they get shut down, some businesses will ride it out and try again in 2019. Whether hers will be one of them is up in the air.

“I put so much of my life in this for the last few years and it’s taken a toll. I’m tired. But at the same time, I’m so passionate about it. I would probably try to pick up in two years if we didn’t leave the state, which is actually a consideration because the fiscal situation we’re seeing here doesn’t seem to be getting better. Now we have an opportunity to see it get better and people are fighting with us to stop that from happening. And I don’t know if I want to be a part of a community that’s going to treat me that way.”

And that is really at the heart of this debate. What kind of a community is the Kenai Peninsula Borough? Does it embrace new industries, new ideas or is cannabis a step too far? Tomorrow we’ll hear from someone who thinks it is.

 

Former Borough Assembly member Blaine Gilman has been a vocal opponent of letting cannabis businesses operate in the unincorporated borough. In the next part of the series, we’ll find out why.