State cites Mat-Su marijuana grow for 1,840 tracking violations after finding hundreds of untagged plants

State marijuana regulators cited a Mat-Su cultivation facility, Dope Dynasty, for 1,840 violations of Alaska's plant tracking rules after investigators found hundreds of plants without the required state tags during a January 2025 inspection, according to Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office records.

Alaska requires licensed growers to track every marijuana plant from the time it's propagated until it's sold, transferred or destroyed. Each plant over 18 inches tall must carry a tag tied to METRC, the state's tracking system, which lets regulators follow plants and products through the legal market.

Two investigators made a routine inspection on Jan. 2, 2025, and found untagged plants throughout the facility: 55 in the mother room, which holds the plants used to produce clones, 150 in one flower room, 420 in another and 255 more in a third. The notice describes most of them as at least 18 inches tall. Because the grow rooms were being sprayed, an employee did the count. METRC showed 86 plants for the whole facility that morning. A manager and the employee told investigators the plants had been in their rooms for about 1 1/2 to two weeks.

The manager said the business had ordered tags and was waiting for them. But METRC showed its last successful tag order was placed July 22, 2024, and an order placed the day after the inspection failed for insufficient funds. At a follow-up visit Jan. 6, a second manager told investigators he had fallen behind on tracking and tagging and hadn't caught up.

The office counted 920 violations of each of two rules: one requiring growers to secure stored inventory and account for it in the tracking system, and one requiring them to tag and track their plants. The notice doesn't explain how it reached 920. Its room-by-room figures add up to 880 untagged plants.

In a written response, the business said every plant was tagged before investigators returned Jan. 6, that it had written a new tagging procedure and trained its staff. "This oversight was an isolated incident, and it does not reflect our commitment to compliance," the response said. It asked regulators to treat the case as a warning, calling it the business's first violation of this kind.

The notice listed no fine. The Marijuana Control Board took up the case at its February 2025 meeting, where a Dope Dynasty employee took full responsibility for the violations, according to the minutes, and the board issued an accusation against the license. The board's February 2026 agenda listed the case as pending before the state Office of Administrative Hearings.

The same batch of records shows two Anchorage cultivation facilities cited in late 2024 for smaller tracking lapses: Arctic Earth for 260 untagged plants and Tundra Farms for 16.