Pubdate: Thu, 02 Aug 2012
Source: Chico News & Review, The (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsreview.com/chico/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/559

A SPITEFUL INSULT TO VOTERS

Supervisors' Move to Adopt Stricter Medi-Pot Ordinance Smells of Vindictiveness

It's hard not to see vindictiveness behind the Board of Supervisors' 
decision Tuesday (July 31) to move toward banning all outdoor 
cultivation of medical marijuana in Butte County. It's as if the 
members of the board majority-Supervisors Larry Wahl of Chico, Kim 
Yamaguchi of Paradise and Bill Connelly of Oroville-were saying to 
the people of Butte County, who in June solidly approved Measure A 
overturning the board's first marijuana-cultivation ordinance, that 
they could take their referendum and, well, shove it.

By all indications, voters approved the referendum, Measure A, 
because they thought the ordinance was too restrictive, particularly 
in its prohibition of cultivation on any parcel smaller than a half-acre.

So, in response and with a large measure of spite, the supervisors 
decided to move toward an even more restrictive ordinance, in direct 
opposition to the will of the voters. "You didn't like our 
ordinance?" they seemed to be saying. "Well, see what you think of 
this one, suckers."

The new ordinance will be modeled on Kings County, where 
medical-marijuana patients are allowed to grow only on their own 
property and only if the plants are enclosed in a structure of some kind.

The supervisors already have outlawed medical-marijuana dispensaries 
in Butte County. With the new ordinance, patients who can't afford a 
structure, who are too ill to garden, or who don't have a growing 
area will be forced to turn to the black market to obtain their medicine.

The supervisors may not like Proposition 215, which legalized the 
medical use of marijuana. And they clearly didn't like it when voters 
overturned their cultivation ordinance. But in a democracy the will 
of the voters is supreme. What the board majority is doing is an 
insult to that bedrock notion.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom