Reporter Who Quit on Air to Fight for Legal Pot Faces 54 Years for Distribution

But in September 2014, Greene achieved instant internet celebrity when she declared on live TV that she was not only a marijuana advocate but also the founder of the underground cannabis club she was reporting on. Such a conflict of interest—and the impromptu nature of the confession—would have lead to her being fired from the Alaskan news station anyway, but Greene was a step ahead.

"Fuck it—I quit," she announced before immediately walking off camera, leaving another anchor to awkwardly apologize for the incident.

Two months later, in November 2014, Alaska became the third US state to vote to legalize recreational marijuana use, and the regulation went into effect the following February. But that legal milestone hasn't been much help to Greene; her cannabis advocacy battle has turned into a criminal case. After her televised declaration, according to court documents, the Anchorage Police Department raided her Alaska Cannabis Club (ACC) two times and performed six undercover marijuana purchases from the club between March 5, 2015 and August 7, 2015. Greene said her attorney informed her initially that she was being charged with eight counts of "misconduct involving a controlled substance." If convicted on all of these charges, Greene was told she could face up to 24 years in prison; because the club is registered in her name, Greene is the only person state prosecutors charged, despite the presence and involvement of other club members in the raids and undercover sales. But when I spoke to Greene on Thursday, she had just found out—from a reporter who was covering her case—that she was facing an additional six charges. These additional charges could potentially add another 30 years to her sentence.

On top of all that, Greene had also just been informed on Thursday that her defense attorney was quitting the case to begin working for the state as a prosecutor. (Though Greene does not believe her former attorney will become directly involved with her case from the other side.)

The 28-year-old activist doesn't sugarcoat her legal situation.

"I'm not very hopeful, because none of this makes sense," she said. "The fact that the state has already spent so much time and money [on me] just doesn't make sense."

In 1975, Alaska became the first state to legalize personal, at-home use of the drug. In 1998, the Alaska Medical Marijuana Initiative legalized medical marijuana, but with an important catch: Dispensaries were not part of the provision, which severely limited access. Patients could only grow their own marijuana or appoint a "caregiver" to do it for them, and caregivers in turn could only grow for one person who wasn't a relative. The limits for each instance were one ounce of cannabis or six plants.

In addition to acting as a center for activism and community, the ACC offered a way around these restrictions. The club operates much like a dispensary anywhere else, except that you can't gain access unless you actually join and pay dues; members could then make "donations" in exchange for weed. New members must sign an agreement acknowledging that they "understand that any voluntary contributions made for cannabis I may acquire from the Alaska Cannabis Club are used to ensure its continued operation and that any cash transaction, membership credit or exchange for cannabis in no way constitutes commercial promotion of illegal marijuana or illegal distribution. The monies I may donate, membership credits I may earn or apply, or work that I do in the production of the cannabis are provided to help the Alaska Cannabis Club continue its operations." The agreement includes stipulations like, "I declare that I will implement my own policies at home, the office, the car and wherever I am or travel to within Alaska that will ensure that my cannabis does not get onto the illegal market, nor will it get into the hands of minors." It also requires potential members to declare that they are 21 years of age or older, may legally consume cannabis in Alaska, and consent to participate in the ACC's "study on the effects of cannabis use in society."

"It's not like we just started selling a bunch of weed to whoever, whenever," Greene said. "We followed the laws. The state is now using the laws pre-legalization to prosecute and persecute me."

Greene became a marijuana advocate through her job at KTVA, which sent her to Colorado and Washington to report on the cannabis industries in both states.

"My goal as a journalist was to show Alaska what we might look like if we decided to legalize weed," she told me. "But while I was [visiting other states], I met patients who had driven for days across the country for legal cannabis. It's something I had been smoking daily for years, but I had no idea about the medicinal value behind it."

When she returned to Alaska, Greene said she was heartbroken by the fact that so many medicinal marijuana patients struggled to steadily secure cannabis. "I saw people who were hurting, and I knew I was probably the only one who was willing to do something about it," she said.

Greene says she was further ignited by the overt biases against minorities present in the cannabis industry and in regulation.

"Even after legalization, I realized how underrepresented minorities are in the cannabis industry, and how overrepresented we are in prisons," she said. "I noticed how stacked the deck is against all of us, everywhere, with cannabis being used as one of the major tools in oppression."

Greene created the Alaska Cannabis Club on April 20, 2014 to combat this prejudice and to act as a "self-sustaining system, where patients that needed cannabis would be able to get it from other patients that cultivated it and had excess." After her dramatic on-air resignation a few months later, she began working full-time as an activist and advocate. She started an Indiegogo campaign that raised $9,000 for an initiative to get voters to support legalized recreational cannabis use.

After the proposition was passed that November, she says the state contacted the press—before contacting her—to say they were launching an investigation to see if she had violated campaign finance laws in her campaign.

"From then on, it just feels like they've been chipping away at the idea of me," Green said. (According to court documents, the Alaska Public Offices Commission found Greene's campaign had not violated state laws.)

When Alaska's legal recreational cannabis laws took effect in November 2014, the private patient association expanded membership to everyone who could legally consume cannabis. But according to the Guardian, because the ACC began offering recreational marijuana under its terms before the state had formalized regulations for business licenses, the club was targeted, along with two other clubs. According to court documents, the state's Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) Board—which was in charge of implementing weed regulations at the time—sent Greene a cease and desist letter during the ongoing investigation; she responded by expressing "disagreement with ABC's analysis of the law." The documents then state, "Despite being informed of the illegal conduct, the Alaska Cannabis Club continued its unlawful sales of marijuana."

Greene and other critics take issue with the proportion of the state's response to the club; according to the Guardian, some people believe that Greene the ACC should have been fined or issued a citation for selling marijuana without a license, similar to what would happen if a restaurant were selling alcohol without a license. The raids were particularly harrowing for Greene, whose siblings help her run the ACC. "That was 12 officers with guns running in and holding my siblings, club members, and I up like any other gang would," Green told me. "We didn't get any answers as to what was going on, or why they even had a warrant." According to a post Greene published on her blog in August, "the officers acted outside the scope of the warrant, conducting unlawful body searches on patients, threatening all patients and Club volunteers with arrest if they didn't consent to taking mugshot-like photos on the scene, destroying cameras, seizing vehicles not included in the warrant and not leaving the lawfully required notice behind."

Greene said she is particularly frustrated because she doesn't believe there were complaints about the group's alleged misconduct. Being a responsible institution in her community was always a top priority for her and other club members.

"If anyone could say that his or her child had ever stepped inside the club, or if anyone could say anything they got there had made them ill, then I would understand why there might be some pushback," she said. "I thought we finished all of this when we voted in 2014 to stop sending people to jail for weed, but that's clearly not the case."

Despite the fact that many people relished sharing video of Greene's live-TV fuck-you moment, Greene said she has felt much less supported as her legal battle unfolds, which she largely attributes to misinformation.

"It's being framed like I'm some drug dealer with pounds and pounds of weed just giving it out to everyone who will take it, and that's not the case," Greene said. "Yes, I have a really small personal garden, but all of the cannabis in the club belongs to its members." Even though recreational marijuana was legalized in the state, Greene said the vast majority of club's hundreds of members are still medical users. She says less than a dozen are in their 20s.

She says the local Alaskan media has mostly ignored the unfolding story.

"I think some of the media think the more light that is shined on the situation, the more absurd it looks," she said. "[But] the less they report on it, the less likely it will be to change."

She also thinks her high profile as a black woman and vocal advocate has been a factor as well.

"I was doing this radio interview on a local station, several months back, and during my interview the film station manager called the radio station manager and yelled at to him to take me off air," she said. "The radio station manager was a cannabis enthusiast, and basically told this other guy to shove it and asked me to stay an extra hour."

Despite major setbacks, Greene said she is going to keep fighting.

"This way," she said, "the people of Alaska can decide if they'd like to see their tax dollars stop being wasted by the state prosecuting cannabis as if it were meth or heroin."