The state Alcohol Control Board voted unanimously on Wednesday to relax rules on alcohol sales, making good on Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s pledge to allow restaurants to deliver beer and wine and allow curbside pickup from distilleries, breweries and package stores.
Similar changes that are being considered for marijuana sales were delayed to Friday.
The emergency regulations, which automatically expire 120 days after enactment, will allow restaurants to deliver sealed containers of beer and wine with food deliveries. The deliveries are restricted to restaurant-run deliveries, not third-party services like Grubhub and DoorDash, and are limited to twice the value of the food order.
There’s no delivery of liquor or mixed drinks, but the regulations also allow for curbside pickup of liquor, beer and wine from package stores, bars, distilleries, breweries and restaurants. Under previous rules, customers were required to enter the store to pick up purchases even if they were made ahead of time.
The Marijuana Control Board met earlier in the day to consider relaxing enforcement and new emergency regulations for marijuana sales. It approved an advisory that eases enforcement to allow people transporting wholesale marijuana and other products between wholesalers, manufacturers and retailers to make the handoffs outside the building, including at airports, and it also allows transporters to make an overnight stop instead of requiring all transport to happen within a day.
Both rules are intended to reduce the number of trips transporters make, particularly when transporting goods between coastal or rural communities and communities on the road system.
Most members of the Marijuana Control Board favored the eased rules on marijuana, but public safety member Lt. Christopher Jaime, an Alaska Wildlife Trooper from Soldotna, said he intended on opposing every change.
“I’m gonna vote no on this document just because I don’t believe that a lot of stuff should be changed right now,” he said, telling the board it didn’t need to entertain changes to the wording of the advisory. “I’m going to vote no regardless of the wording.”
The board ultimately delayed action on its one customer-facing change to allow curbside pickup of orders after the board offered a handful of revisions to the proposed regulations. The move is aimed at limiting the number of people who need to enter a store but has raised concerns about security given the state’s higher standards placed on marijuana retailers.
The board is not entertaining marijuana deliveries and the Alaska Marijuana Industry Association has not requested such a change.
The Marijuana Control Board is set to meet again at 11 a.m. Friday. Changes to curbside pickup will require the retailers to submit the changes to the Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office so it could take additional time for curbside pickup to go into effect.
Apparently Mr Collins opinions do not include alcohol delivery when he stated that not a lot of stuff should be changed. The voter approved initiative requested that CBD and alcohol be treated equally,Mr Collins is exhibiting personal bias which should disqualify him from serving on the ABC Board.