While Municipality of Anchorage leaders are trying to figure out what to do about spice and the many problems that come with it, the co-owner of a local marijuana business is trying to help.


Her approach is somewhat unusual: Free weed. That’s Nicole Crites plan to solve Anchorage’s spice problem.


Destroy your spice in front of her, and she’ll give you twice as much marijuana for free. So far, she’s seen about an ounce and a half discarded.


“Flakes everywhere, and completely saturated with toilet bowl cleaner and disposed of,” she explained. “These are all packaged up in little one-gram, two-gram bags, so that’s quite a bit of spice. I’m happy with that.”


Absolute Chronic Delivery Company, her marijuana business, is one of three pot businesses the Anchorage Police Department has raided this year. Her husband, Michael Crites, is currently fighting felony charges for controlled substance misconduct. But when we checked in with APD, they told us this particular exchange is legal.


There’s a fine line though. She can’t accept anything in return for the weed, and she can’t give more than an ounce of it to anyone. And police said the moment she puts a bag of spice in her hand, she breaks the law and could be issued a $500 citation.


But she said that’s not an issue.


“They destroy the spice in front of me, they dispose of it, it’s over,” she said. “I never touch it.”


Spice has been concentrated and deadly at Bean’s Café, but police also believe it caused a woman to disrobe and destroy an Anchorage Subway.


Crites said the people reaching out to her to get rid of their spice come from all walks of life.


“You have a lot of people who are smoking spice because they can then pass a [urine analysis], so I have all spectrums, I have professionals to addicts,” she explained.


Crites said spice destroyed by anyone means less of it on the street, and that’s the goal.


Right now, possessing spice is just a violation, punishable by a $500 citation, but a resolution Mayor Ethan Berkowitz plans to introduce to the Assembly Tuesday night would make using and dealing spice misdemeanor crimes, which could mean jail time for offenders.