Big Cannabis: Keep out of our neighborhoods

The Sentinel’s Editorial (Nov. 21) says that because the zoning allows it, big cannabis operations should go forward unfortunately misses the point. Zoning may allow the operation on Crest Drive in La Selva Beach, but the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors had the opportunity to provide protections for nearby residents just like they did for city dwellers near cannabis retail outlets. They didn’t do it.

For many of us, thinking about a cannabis farm, it’s a few acres in a secluded area where your quirky friend from high school grows some crop for himself with a little profit on the side.

With legalization, that all changed in California. Cannabis is big business with quality control, security issues and the need to maximize profits. They have optimized the business by creating huge cannabis factories that pump out products at predictable schedules and quality. And what helps make this product even more profitable is that it is labeled a crop by the State of California so it can be produced on cheap ag land (while it is still not legal on a federal basis).

Here’s why you should care. Because of its connection to ag lands, the cannabis industry is moving into rural neighborhoods and instead of farming as we know it, they are building industrial cannabis complexes.

In the Crest neighborhood, a cannabis license applicant wants to put 220,000 square feet of cannabis buildings in the heart of the neighborhood. This neighborhood is not against cannabis as they already have two cannabis nurseries nearby but what they are against is an industrial operation in a neighborhood of family homes and small farms.

As the Sentinel noted, 22 people spoke before county supervisors on behalf of protecting rural communities (concentrated in South County), but the three northern supervisors voted with the very few cannabis proponents that showed up to the meeting. Their vote will allow industrial-style grow houses within 200 feet of homes.

Supervisors Caput and Friend spoke on behalf of rural neighborhoods but were told the vote should be for the good of the county. The supervisors promised to protect neighborhoods when they originally enacted the cannabis ordinance but it is apparent from their vote that they only mean to protect neighborhoods in their own districts.

While cannabis holds the promise of big dollars for both the growers and the county, it is an unrealized promise at this point with the wholesale cannabis prices continuing to drop. The county expects us to believe that they strictly control with limited staff all aspects of the cannabis business to prevent black market profits. But, a recent Politico article describes how growers are making more money on the black market than the regulated legal market.

There are more than 1,400 parcels in the county that could apply for a cannabis license and county staff projects that 40% of those parcels will become cannabis operations. Goodbye to your neighborhood apple farm and strawberry field as the county makes it easier to convert to the energy and water intensive, non-food crop, cannabis. Anyone living next door to a commercial agriculture zoned lot should be prepared to greet your new neighbor - an out of county, large scale cannabis operator.

As reported in the Sentinel, “Merced Investment Co. LLC don’t want to be in a neighborhood where they aren’t wanted.” Why would any neighborhood want a cannabis factory in the heart of their community and on the doorstep of their daycare center and next door to a State Park and an environmental reserve? Why would neighbors want the constant rumble of electrical use (that will supposedly equal the infrastructure needs of three Costco stores), eightfoot high security fences making the property look like a penitentiary, and 18-wheel delivery trucks racing up and down our one lane country roads?

Cannabis factories have their place in industrial zones. Let’s keep agricultural zoned property for true farming.