TRINITY COUNTY SEES A BACKLASH AGAINST GROWERS

Our view: The problem isn't medical marijuana itself, but growers who
flock to tolerant counties to raise a lucrative crop.

Tolerance has its limits, and Trinity County may have reached
them.

Prompted by residents' complaints about an explosion in gray-market
commercial marijuana growing, the Trinity County supervisors this
afternoon will discuss revising or repealing lax local ordinances
that they approved just last fall.

The current county rules allow patients with a doctor's
recommendation to have up to 3 pounds of processed marijuana and as
many as 12 mature plants, well above the state minimum of 8 ounces
and six plants. If that only meant cancer patients had an adequate
supply to keep their nausea in check, it's hard to imagine anyone
complaining.

But many residents argue that the county has experienced toxic
side-effects from the official tolerance.

Commercial growers have moved into the county to take advantage of
the loose laws (and, to be sure, the remote country and light
law-enforcement presence). Tall fences, guns and vicious dogs protect
valuable crops. The pungent aroma of marijuana plots blows right
into school playgrounds. Easy money lures young people into the
quasi-legal drug trade. The lumber mill has a harder time finding
drug-free employees. It's changing the fabric of society -- and not
for the better.

Marijuana growing is hardly a new phenomenon in Trinity County, but
it's become far more prevalent and overt. No less an authority than
High Times magazine -- the Newsweek of the pot world -- reported this
summer that the county has seen "an enormous increase."

The problem isn't medical marijuana in itself, but growers flocking
to tolerant jurisdictions so they can raise what remains a generally
illegal and thus lucrative crop. And Trinity County isn't the first
area to see a backlash. Amid a similar flood of commercial growing
operations, voters in the hippie haven of Mendocino County tightened
their local limits via a ballot measure this June.

Few Californians object to bona-fide medical use by the seriously
ill, but as long as shady pot growers exploit laws passed in the name
of helping the sick, local governments will keep deciding that
compassion is just too much trouble.