Private Pot

NORML notes that Alaska's Court of Appeals is following through on the logic of its 2003 ruling that residents of the state still have a right to possess up to four ounces of marijuana in the home, despite a 1990 ballot initiative that ostensibly recriminalized such possession. In a decision issued last week, the court threw out a search warrant that resulted in a man's arrest for marijuana cultivation because the police did not have probable cause to believe that more than four ounces were involved. The court held that "a judicial officer should not issue a warrant to search a person?s home for evidence of marijuana possession unless the State?s warrant application establishes probable cause to believe that the person?s possession of marijuana exceeds the scope of the possession that is constitutionally protected under Ravin," the 1975 Alaska Supreme Court decision that said pot possession in the home was protected by the state constitution's privacy clause.