SHASTA COUNTY OFFICIALS SEE POT GARDENS; FLIGHT LAST WEEK REVEALED
GROWING AREAS

After a recent helicopter ride over Shasta County showed him how many
residents are likely growing pot illegally, a county supervisor said
he and fellow supervisors need to be wary when reconsidering a
moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries later this year.

At Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting, Chairman Les Baugh showed
pictures of marijuana growth he took when he accompanied Chief Deputy
District Attorney Josh Lowery and a member of the Sheriff's Office's
marijuana eradication team on a flight last week.

Baugh said the flyover, which was initiated by the Sheriff's Office,
had nothing to do with the recent decision of the Anderson Planning
Commission to ban medical marijuana dispensaries. Baugh's wife,
Susie, is a member of that commission.

Though he said he'd expected heavy pot operations were common in
isolated areas such as Hayfork, Baugh said he was surprised at how
many crops he saw in Shasta County.

And Baugh said he questions whether all the crops he saw, some of
which were the size of a football field, are really being used by
Proposition 215 patients.

"Literally, our neighborhoods have become industry," he said.

Because he suspects illegal growth and sales are overtaking rural
Shasta County, Baugh said the board will have to be "very, very
cautious" when reconsidering a moratorium on medical marijuana
dispensaries in the unincorporated county that they extended in December.

"It's changing forever not just the landscape but the community," he said.

Supervisor Glenn Hawes said he sees suspicious marijuana growth in
his rural district all the time, some of it even close to schools.

"It's too bad we can't just turn loose a little 2, 4-D (an herbicide)
and take care of it," he said at Tuesday's meeting.

Hawes said he, too, thinks much of the marijuana cultivation in the
county is illegal.

"I know that this stuff isn't just being used by their families," he
said. "They're selling this stuff. It's become a problem."

Baugh said he doesn't have a solution for the problem, but he's
concerned that marijuana growth in the county will create dangerous
living conditions for residents.

"I was hoping that somehow Shasta County's ordinances could be
crafted to protect residents of Shasta County from what I'm terming
'industry' in the middle of residential neighborhoods," he said after
Tuesday's meeting. "Basically, what I saw was that I'm too late. It's
already there; it's already here."

Deputies are increasingly being put at risk against armed growers,
said Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, adding that weapons are
usually found at residential grow areas as well as those on public land.

"It's becoming much more dangerous and more violent," he said.

And while more Prop 215 patients have begun using their medical
marijuana recommendations to grow excess pot in the last couple of
years, Bosenko said, his short-staffed department doesn't have the
manpower to fully tackle the problem.

"There's usually more tips than there are hours in a day and days in
a year," he said.

Bosenko estimated that about 25 percent of tips his office got last
year were investigated.

Saying he doesn't want to exhaust the Sheriff's Office's resources
any more, Baugh said he will continue to stand against medical
marijuana dispensaries in the unincorporated county.

"I have never been in favor of dispensaries," he said. "I think the
city of Redding has plenty of dispensaries. There's not a need for
them in the unincorporated area of Shasta County."