Alaska Measure 2, allowing Alaskans aged 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of cannabis and six plants was passed in 2014. It went into effect February 2015, making Alaska the fourth state to enact recreational marijuana reform.

No stranger to the legalization fight, cannabis was decriminalized in Alaska in 1975. In 1990 it was re-criminalized, but overturned in 2003. A new criminalization law was passed in 2006. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom, cannabis has been legal for medicinal use since 1998, with Alaska being the second medicinal state, alongside Oregon and Washington.

Since sales began in October 2016, Alaska has collected $7.4 million in marijuana taxes, with a record month of $1 million in January 2018.

Half of all taxes are earmarked for programs aimed at reducing repeat criminal offenders. At the time of writing, a bill is pending for additional use of tax revenue to go towards a marijuana education and treatment program.

“It’s been this experience of seeing the hypocrisy within marijuana prohibition, and how it’s destroyed so many lives and communities who get caught up in the war on drugs, while other communities are more easily able to have their breaking of the law exonerated or overlooked. There is a massive injustice being done in a nation that believes in equal justice under the law; marijuana enforcement makes a mockery of that ideal.”

Senator (D) Corey Booker