NO POT ON AG LANDS

Commissioners Vote To Restrict Grow Locations

BOULDER -- County commissioners have ruled out letting
medical-marijuana businesses grow their crops in unincorporated
Boulder County's agricultural zoning districts.

Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to restrict "medical
marijuana centers" -- businesses that sell, grow or distribute
medical marijuana -- to the county's business, commercial, light
industrial, general industrial and transitional zoning districts.

During a public hearing before the vote, several medical-marijuana
advocates and business owners urged the commissioners to allow them
to cultivate cannabis crops in ag zones, something several indicated
already is going on.

Tom Luecke, a partner in a Boulder dispensary, complained that with
the moratoriums or pending bans in place in many area cities and
towns, Boulder County and the city of Boulder are the only places
left where dispensaries can grow the medical marijuana they sell to
patients on the state's registry.

David Cahoon of Lafayette said medical marijuana could be integrated
into an organic farming operation.

Limiting the locations where medical marijuana can be grown will make
less of it available to the Boulder County patients who need it and
will drive up prices, Cahoon argued.

"This is a plant," said David Platt of Boulder, adding that it makes
more sense to grow medical marijuana in a greenhouse in a rural
setting than in a warehouse in an industrial area.

Douglas Hayes of Lafayette said he has a 60-acre farm in
unincorporated Boulder County where such a crop would be appropriate,
would benefit from solar-paneled greenhouses or other structures, and
would be far from any schools.

The county's new rules specify that a property occupied by a medical
marijuana dispensary or growing operations can't be closer than 1,000
feet to an alcohol or drug treatment facility, a licensed child-care
facility, or an educational facility with students below college
level.

Commissioner Will Toor said he'd be open to allowing outdoor
marijuana crops in agricultural zones, or possibly even indoor crops
raised in existing greenhouses or other structures already on those
farms. But he said he wouldn't favor permitting warehouse-style
growing operations on ag land.

However, Toor deferred to concerns that Commissioners Cindy Domenico
and Ben Pearlman expressed about letting commercial medical marijuana
in ag zoning districts, at least for the time being.

"A medicinal crop like this and food crops are very different,"
Domenico said.

Pearlman said that, though marijuana is a plant, "by and large it's
not grown as a plant." He said growing marijuana is "not an
agricultural use as we traditionally understand it."

Pearlman also said permitting medical marijuana to be grown in
greenhouses or other farm outbuildings would raise security issues
not posed by other crops.

"There's not a lot of people breaking into greenhouses to steal
cucumbers," he said.