Re the pot bust, it seems the constitutional backdrop may have forced both sides into a tacit understanding that pot is fine so long as it stays at home: Dave

Re the pot bust, it seems the constitutional backdrop may have forced both sides into a tacit understanding that pot is fine so long as it stays at home: Dave Schofield is the chief of police in Whittier. He is also the only officer who lives in town. Alaska’s laws often reflect the needs of a sparsely populated state, which presents challenges for policing within Begich Towers. For example, the state constitution has written into it a right to privacy; if something is occurring in your own home, you have the right to keep it private. This means that although there is a pervasive smell of marijuana in Begich Towers, the police can do little about it. “The law says you can’t have drugs within 500 feet of a school; there’s not a unit in this building that’s 500 feet from the school, but we have the right-to-privacy issue.” The pot bust itself appears to have stemmed from this event: A few years ago, a pot grower on the 10th floor had just finished a harvest and decided to get rid of some of the evidence by flushing it down the toilet. In the process he stopped up the plumbing on the floors below him—a neighbor called city management to complain that someone had flushed large amounts of dog food down the toilets, but it turned out to be pellets of grow medium. http://reedyoung.com/project/whittier-alaska/r-young-whittier-people-07/ http://reedyoung.com/project/whittier-alaska/r-young-whittie...