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