RED BLUFF BAN ON CULTVATION CROSSES A LINE

Our View: The City Should Respect The Right To Grow Otherwise Legal
Plants In A User's Own Home.

It's a hard line, but the Red Bluff City Council has every right to
decide, as it did Tuesday, that medical marijuana sales and
cultivation are simply unwelcome.

But do the councilors have the right to say what otherwise legal users
do in their own homes? They do not, and in that regard Red Bluff's
newly passed ordinance goes an intrusive step too far.

Medical marijuana advocates naturally hate the ban - and pending court
cases might force the city to change its policy. In the meantime, it's
hard to see the problem. Even though it is legal in California to use
marijuana with a doctor's recommendation, local zoning outlaws all
sorts of legal activities when they don't fit in a particular locale.

Cities have banned fast-food restaurants and billboards. Try to raise
milk goats in a suburban backyard, and code enforcement will shut you
down before the first tub of cheese has ripened. Bees are vital to
agriculture, but keeping a hive violates the Redding Municipal Code.

We don't live on the open frontier. We live in cities. We need to
share public spaces.

Where the Red Bluff ordinance crosses a line, however, is when it
crosses homeowners' thresholds. It's one thing to bar growing in
backyards - where pungent harvest-season odors float over fences - but
quite another to regulate what users do in their own homes.

If a card-carrying "patient" wants to grow a few plants under lights
in the garage or the back bedroom, it's hard to see how it is the
business of anyone at City Hall.

The city could have a stake if large-scale growers were gutting
residences and converting them into grow houses. That has become a
common practice in some parts, and rewiring homes without regard to
fire codes poses obvious hazards. To the extent we're talking about
personal use, though, citizens have a right to be left alone in their
own homes.

Medical marijuana advocates say Red Bluff's ban on indoor growing is a
first in the state and ripe for a lawsuit. The council shouldn't back
down because of a legal threat, but it should take a calm look at how
far its regulations go and reconsider.

Should the city protect the public? Absolutely. But the way to do that
is not with an ordinance that needlessly barges into private homes.