TRINITY SUPERVISORS OK TEMPORARY MORATORIUM ON LARGE-SCALE,
RESIDENTIAL MEDICAL MARIJUANA GROWING OPERATIONS

Trinity County supervisors on Wednesday night approved a 45-day
moratorium on large-scale medical marijuana growing operations in the
county's residential neighborhoods.

The board approved the temporary urgency moratorium on a 5-0 vote,
Board of Supervisors Chairman Judy Morris said.

About 100 people attended the meeting inside the Trinity County
Library in Weaverville, Morris said. The meeting lasted about 31/2 hours.

Though pot growing has become a major source of income for the
economically depressed rural county about an hour's drive west of
Redding, the county's Planning Commission last month voted to
recommend the supervisors temporarily ban large grow operations in
neighborhoods county-wide after complaints they were becoming too
large and unsafe.

There are also complaints that many of the grows are really just
farms that sell pot to out-of-towners "whose status as qualified
patients is questionable," county documents show.

The moratorium isn't intended to affect medical marijuana patients
who grow plants for themselves under Prop. 215 guidelines. "We don't
want to harm the person growing for themselves," Morris said.

Trinity officials hope the moratorium will allow more time to come up
with a plan to regulate and issue permits, county planners said.