A FLAWED POT ORDINANCE

Butte County's Rules Are Too Restrictive

As we report this week (see Downstroke, page 8), Butte County citizens
unhappy with the Board of Supervisors' recently passed
medical-cannabis ordinance are circulating a referendum petition
seeking to put it on an upcoming ballot.

We don't blame them. The ordinance is overly restrictive, particularly
for people whose property is smaller than a half-acre in size; they're
prohibited from growing any marijuana whatsoever.

As the CN&R has suggested, the supervisors could have avoided this
problem simply by requiring that small-parcel owners encase their
plants in a greenhouse. At the board's final meeting on the ordinance,
on May 24, Supervisor Maureen Kirk broached that idea, and Biggs Mayor
Roger Frith testified that his town's greenhouse requirement had been
working well, but the remaining supervisors were uninterested.

We understand that the supervisors wanted to protect neighbors from
the nuisance of having a marijuana garden next door, but the resulting
regulation effectively forbids many people from doing what state law
allows: growing six plants for medicinal purposes.