This article originally appeared in the February 2017 print edition of Cannabis Business Times. To subscribe, click here.
Whenever people call Colorado the first state to legalize cannabis, Leif and Arthur Abel, co-founders of medical-grade marijuana producer Greatland Ganja, can’t help but be amused.
“It always put a smile on my face when people talked about Colorado being the first one in the country, because everybody seems to have forgotten the '70s,” says Arthur, 36. He is the manager at Alaska-based Greatland Ganja and oversees the day-to-day operations of the facility and greenhouses.
While most think cannabis was legal in the United States until the early 20th century, when multiple acts of Congress outlawed the plant, Alaska only truly criminalized the plant in 1991. Prior to that, the state recognized a constitutional right to privacy in using cannabis in your own home thanks to a landmark Alaskan Supreme Court case in 1975: Ravin v. State. That’s when the Abel patriarch, Robert Seymour Abel, made his way to the northernmost state, eventually building a life and a family there.
To read the full article in Cannabis Business Times' February edition, click here.
