A local, grassroots cannabis policy group representing ma and pa cannabis growers in Humboldt wants to get growers’ opinions on what they think of when they think of “small scale” cannabis farming. Humboldt Medical Marijuana Advisory Panel has a new post soliciting input. If you were writing an ordinance governing marijuana policy for California or Humboldt County, how much pot would you allow, what would it cost and how would it be inspected?
With the failure of Prop 19, everyone who has been attempting to write cannabis policy—for medical or recreational use—has gone back to the drawing board. I’ve been following many of these discussions closely and one of the constant sticking points is the question of size. Should the County permit unlimited sized grows or should there be a limit? What is that limit? Is it defined by square feet of dirt growing area, square feet of canopy area, number of plants or quantity of finished product? Should there be a permit fee? How much? Should it increase proportionally to the size of the grow or should the cost increase per unit area as size increases? Should there be different permits for industrial grows and family farms? And that gets back to the original question: how does anyone define what a family farm is in the cannabis business?
These are all questions that people have been grappling with. There are no easy answers, since any regulation has to try and contort itself around the reality of Federal prohibition and the falsity of reefer madness. It truly is an impossible situation to which there is no solution that everyone will like. At best, the inevitable regulations will be a huge compromise and at worst will be ignored by the black market. Either way, the more that people get active and let their opinions be known, the better the coming regulations will be.
While I haven’t seen it, there’s a second proposed Humboldt ordinance from the Humboldt Growers Association. Haven’t found a link, either, but here’s the basic info from the Times-Standard: http://calpotnews.com/cultivation/alternate-humboldt-cultivation-ordinance-proposed/
The HGA proposal is not online and their seeming lack of transparency has been a source of concern among many people here. Tonight at the Hemp Fest forum at the Mateel Community Center, some people directed some pointed questions at their hired lobbyist, Max Del Real.
For a moment, it started to get contentious and divisive, but Syreeta from HuMMAP stepped in from the stage and reminded people that we all have to work together. A point that she made earlier in the evening was that HGA was able to make significant progress on their proposal exactly because they didn’t have to deal with all the messiness of open membership that has slowed HuMMAP down. Hopefully, for everyone’s sake and for the sake of community harmony, the various groups will begin to work openly together.
HuMMAP has actually withdrawn the proposal currently on their site and is working on a new medical-oriented proposal now that the immediate pressure of Prop 19 is off. I think that HGA felt some pressure tonight to be more open, so we should be seeing some interesting and productive progress in the coming months.
The forum, by the way was excellent, with nearly everyone emphasizing the contributions of small farmers to the economy and culture and the need for any regulations to include this scale of cannabis farming. The perennial question remains, though: What defines a “small” farmer…?