Pubdate: Thu, 04 Sep 2014
Source: Oceanside Star (BC)
Copyright: 2014 Oceanside Star
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/oceansidestar/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4880
Author: Brian Wilford

GROW OPS ONLY MAKE SENSE FROM A DISTANCE

The introduction of medical-marijuana grow ops shows what happens when
a large, distant bureaucracy gets its hands on something.

If you live near land in the Agricultural Land Reserve, as many
Vancouver Islanders do, you may be among those belatedly discovering
that an application for a legal grow op is in the Health Canada
approval process.

And what's arriving on the farm isn't a crop of noxious weeds but a
large, windowless cement and steel box, impounded by high fences,
locked gates, security cameras and razor wire.

Like those who live near gravel pits that are approved as
industrial-waste dumps, the residents discover that there is no
process for appeal and that their local governments are powerless.

The grow op proposed for the Shelly Farm on Stanford Avenue in
Parksville may not draw a lot of protest from the Shellybrook mobile
home park, also owned by the Shelly family, or from its
light-industrial neighbours across the street.

But the plant proposed for the River's Edge subdivision,
million-dollar homes on two or three acres, seems to warrant closer
scrutiny.

The owner says the 10,000-square-foot facility will have low
visibility but the neighbours appear unconvinced.

Beyond the local fracas, is there really such demand for medical
marijuana that tiny Parksville needs two (so far) such facilities?

There is no shortage of pot smokers but those smoking with
prescriptions seem critical of the federal strains as substandard and
less-effective.

And doctors are saying they don't want to be prescribing something
they don't understand as medicine.

Most bizarre of all, possessing, growing and selling the substance in
question remains otherwise a federal criminal offence. And yet, here
come the grow ops, landing like alien spacecraft in our communities.
Not a problem, it seems, if you're in faraway Ottawa. 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D