When it comes to reporting on the dangers of large marijuana farms, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors beat The New York Times on a scoop.
Zach Friend and Bruce McPherson, the board’s two newest supes, submitted a letter at a meeting that suggested reforms on large marijuana farms—citing environmental degradation and law enforcement issues. What a buzzkill, right? But Friend says the study into new regulations isn’t just about busting up parties—ahem, we mean, taking away people’s right to medicine.
“This isn’t about individual use or access. This is about the fact that we’ve had significant neighborhood and rural impacts because we’ve had unmitigated and unregulated and unenforced grows,” Friend said at the June 18 meeting, where people showed up wearing sunglasses. “We’ve been silent on this issue, and you get to a tipping point very quickly where things get out of hand in a neighborhood and you’re trying to put a genie back in a bottle.”
Two days later, The New York Times wrote a long news story about what pot grows are doing to California landscapes and redwood forests. In Humboldt County, the main focus of the article, hilltops have been leveled, bulldozers have started landslides and dams are diverting water from salmon whose populations were already decimated by logging—leaving the North Coast residents feeling a little less high on life.
Many Humboldt growers also used dangerous rat poisons like D-Con, the no-fun dangers of which the Weekly reported last week. The poisons have killed endangered animals and California fishers—cute, weasel-like animals. Humboldt’s County supervisors have taken steps to get D-Con out of stores.
Needless to say, pot grows across California have politicians trying to weed through tricky issues. Here in Santa Cruz, the county already has a moratorium on new dispensaries—which expires in November. In light of confusing court decisions and unclear state and federal law, staff is at work studying what the county’s next homegrown ordinances should be.
During public comment, the talk of regulation at the meeting got reform-minded folks, like medical marijuana attorney/hero Ben Rice, talking about the benefits for testing crops for potency and chemicals. Friend says—bluntly—that’s out of the scope of what the county can tackle.
