A “yes” vote on measure N will mean that thousands of local residents who legally grew a few plants outdoors for their own medicinal use last year will be forced to grow indoors, so they'll need a spare room and have to spend thousands on lights and ventilation systems the county now requires to meet code.

They will also have to spend thousands more on power, and deal with the mold and bug problems that always come with indoor grows.

To make matters worse, they'll have to post their prescription documents on the outside on the their home, making them an easy target for home invasion robbers.

Marijuana growing in residential areas wasn't a major problem until the board of supervisors closed the dispensaries and told people to grow at home, but in spite of an admission that was a mistake and a promise to reopen them this hasn't happened.

Even if they did reopen the dispensaries it wouldn't matter, because if people vote “yes” on Measure N there won't be enough marijuana legally grown here to supply them, since you'll need 20 acres of ag-zoned land with a house on it occupied by a legal caregiver to grow for dispensaries.

There aren't enough legal ag parcels available to meet the demand, plus they are very expensive, and with state legalization likely in the next two years why would anyone make such a large investment when future rules are so uncertain?.

Then there are the rules that constitute an unfair business practice, making the county ripe for legal action. Why do marijuana plants need to be twice as far from streams than any other crop? Why do only marijuana growers need large setbacks from property lines and homes?

Marijuana will only be legally grown for money on ag land, so by the county's own zoning regulations it must be considered an ag crop and therefore is subject to the right to farm ordinance passed by the Board of Supervisors.

You can't have it both ways, if marijuana isn't an ag crop then it can't be on ag parcels, if it is an ag crop then there is no exemption for it in the right to farm ordinance so it cannot be discriminated against.

On top of these rules you need a very specific type of fencing, you are restricted to local outlets for your crop, and have special rules to follow for fertilizer and pesticides as marijuana growers will be held to much higher environmental standards than for any other crop for absolutely no logical reason.

A “yes” vote will help criminal growers, because for thousands of Lake County medicinal marijuana consumers the illegal growers will become the closest and cheapest source, and like closing the dispensaries the people who want marijuana to go away will have this backfire on them for the same reason: a fundamental lack of understanding of how the marijuana industry works.

The BOS was told loud and clear that closing the dispensaries would create more crime and more problems with backyard grows, and as one supervisor recently said “It's 10 times worse,” which shows even they now understand the cause-and-effect relationship from that failed experiment .

We need a better ordinance than what the county has given us, one that isn't so restrictive that it encourages illegality as the hopelessly impractical BOS version does. A far better ordinance has been drafted and will be on the November ballot, or the BOS could adopt it right after the election.

So in spite of what the “yes” side is saying, a “no” vote doesn't necessarily mean we will have no rules come July, as there is a perfectly reasonable alternative on the table.

This grower-sponsored ordinance would not allow any more plants on commercial grows than the county ordinance did, it mainly lets residential growers have a few (four on lots smaller than an acre) outdoor plants, and lets commercial grows operate on large parcels that are not zoned ag.

This growers' ordinance also collects fees from growers to fund a code enforcement officer to oversee marijuana plantings, so there will be constant oversight with clear, fair rules to follow.

This growers' ordinance was drastically revised during its drafting in response to the input of numerous citizens, unlike the ordinance passed by the BOS which did not incorporate any of the changes suggested by any of the 43 citizens who spoke out against it at the BOS meeting.

Without listening to the primary stake holders any ordinance is bound to fail in the real world, where rules need to respect reality if they are to work as intended.

Please vote no on Measure N, and demand that our BOS deal with this issue in a balanced and fair manner that does not shut major sectors of the public out of the process.

Philip Murphy lives in Finley, Calif.

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Written by: Philip Murphy

Published: 14 May 2014