Pubdate: Thu, 13 Oct 2011
Source: Record Searchlight (Redding, CA)
Copyright: 2011 Record Searchlight
Contact:  http://www.redding.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/360
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

SHASTA COUNTY ON RIGHT TRACK WITH POT LIMITS

Marijuana growing is deeply controversial - with advocates of 
"medicinal" cannabis sometimes angrily asserting their rights while 
neighbors of rural pot gardens are increasingly fed up with how the 
Green Rush has changed their peaceful country roads in the past few years.

Given that background, it's hard to imagine that Shasta County's 
planners have every detail precisely right as they bring their first 
draft of a medical-marijuana ordinance to the county's Planning 
Commission, which will take up the issue this afternoon. (The meeting 
is in the supervisors' chambers at 2 p.m.)

But the county is emphatically on the right track in the basic 
framework of its proposals, especially when it comes to restricting 
growing in residential areas.

The county's draft ordinance would allow marijuana to be grown only 
by a patient or primary caregiver who actually lives on a property - 
thus restricting the practice of stacking up marijuana 
recommendations from purported patients here, there and everywhere 
and using them to legally plant large and lucrative gardens.

The ordinance would also restrict the area devoted to marijuana - 
scaling up with the size of the parcel. One-acre lots would be capped 
at 60 square feet, while 20-acre parcels could have as much as 200 square feet.

The rules would further require setbacks from neighbors' homes or 
property lines and a 1,000-foot "no grow" buffer around schools, 
parks, churches, libraries and or any other "youth-oriented facility."

Those are tight limits but seemingly reasonable ones that will ensure 
neighborhoods in the unincorporated county maintain their character. 
People move to such areas precisely to enjoy the elbow room of rural 
life, which includes the ability to use your property without having 
to worry much about what the neighbors over the fence might think. 
 From growers' perspective, that can make it a perfect place.

But converting a property - fence line to fence line - into a 
quasi-legal pot farm goes much too far.

Proposition 215 users have every right under California law to use 
marijuana safely - and to grow it. That doesn't mean they have the 
right to drag down whole neighborhoods.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom