I didn’t know it was possible to feel any worse for cannabis growers and the way regulations have haltingly rolled out in California—lurching forward, reversing, and being revised as special interest groups come forward with their grievances about the devil’s lettuce!
But the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors is making it happen! High five!
If it were literally any other business that was being yanked around this much, 4th District Supervisor Peter Adam would have a conniption fit! But because it’s pot, he’s just fine with regulating the crap out of them. Adam is very concerned that the changes supervisors are asking for don’t go far enough to mitigate conflict with other existing agricultural practices in certain areas of the county.
By that, he means the area’s wine growers! They are worried that dirty pot will destroy the idyllic little drinking haven they’ve created for tourists with the smell! And the sight! Oh my!
Don’t forget that when wine first came around, it wasn’t pretty, either, but guess who has the power now?
“They kind of engineer in conflicts with all of the proximity to all of the existing agriculture and the urban interfaces that they’re attempting to establish,” Adam said during the June 11 meeting.
Where else are they supposed to grow? It’s not like growers can plant an agricultural crop like cannabis away from existing agriculture in the county. It’s everywhere. And even if they could grow cannabis away from existing ag, it’s not like they could grow cannabis away from a city. Those are the two land uses that exist in this county!
Meanwhile, 5th District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino seems to have his head on straight when it comes to changing things on cannabis growers this far into the permitting process! He said it’s “bad government” to change the rules for people who have been trying to make it through the county’s maze of cannabis regulations.
With 200 growers still in the application process, and only a handful of approvals—some of which have already been sued—something appears to be very wrong with the county planning process. I think it broke.
When we set out on this journey together, Santa Barbara County, I had high hopes. But now I can see that you’re just like San Luis Obispo County.
Santa Barbara County supervisors passed the cannabis ordinance in 2018, the first set of changes to it in 2019, and they’re getting ready to pass a second set this year. Wow, now that’s what I call uncertainty! What should they expect in 2021?
I guess it depends on whether Planning Commissioner John Parke decides to go rogue again and make his own rules because the wine grape growers in the 3rd District are lobbying him about how terrible cannabis is for their business. Those Santa Rita Hills AVA folks even got a shoutout from 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann during the June 11 meeting.
She wanted any cannabis projects proposed for those hills to require a conditional use permit. That way the grape growers could design the projects just how they like them—nonexistent.
Lucky for everyone, that proposal didn’t make the cut. I guess the Santa Barbara County Coalition for Responsible Cannabis can take a hike.
The canary is itching to take a hike. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 18-25, 2020.