George Rebane
The Union this (8jan18) morning has a problem connecting some dots when they claim that 1) RMJ retailers can’t get licensed in the county because they must buy product only from licensed growers, and 2) the county has yet to forge a new MJ ordinance that allows county growers to get licensed. What the front-page report (here) misses is that licensed RMJ retailers can buy product from licensed growers in other counties. Instead it offers this confusing verbiage –
A licensed dispensary can only buy from licensed growers. Nevada County has no licensed cultivators because its grow ordinance forbids commercial activity. Local growers can't get state licenses because of that ordinance. … That means once a dispensary sells all its Nevada County product, there won't be any more.
If that obvious approach of buying out-of-county is not possible, then the piece should have clearly stated it instead of leaving readers hanging.
Then in the same issue's op-ed pages we have a column (here) by county Republican chair Bob Hren decrying the Citizens Advisory Group (CAG) report and how it was drafted. The CAG draft report will be presented to the Supes tomorrow 9jan18 at 130pm and you can read it here.
Mr Hren is a strong opponent of all things MJ in the county and he duns the CAG report for its one-sideness, both in its formative deliberations and the contents of its submitted draft. He implies that MIG, the county consultant, stacked the committee with pro-MJ people 20% of whom were involved with growers and growers’ advocates. The remaining 80%, according to Hren, were comprised mostly of obviously pro-RMJ citizens, resulting in the total make-up being highly biased and not representing the true division and attitudes of the 68,000 voters in the affected west county. (Readers may recall that the Supes augmented the post-formation CAG by adding two anti-MJ members to its original make-up.) Nowhere does he make the case that the CAG applicants comprised the correct proportion of all voter attitudes, and that MIG then purposely ignored that proportion in favor of pro-MJ advocates. In any event, the Republican chairman is calling for voters to voice their opinions to the Supes regarding the CAG report and specifically about what grows the new ordinance will permit on R1 and RA parcels.
Regular readers will note that fellow readers and commenters Mr Don Bessee is a member of CAG, and that KVMR News Director Mr Paul Emery was a regular attendee of the CAG meetings. Their observations on the process and resulting product will be most interesting.
[9jan18 update] We attended the CAG’s presentation to the Supes this afternoon. It was an SRO affair, and we left after having heard the consultant’s summary draft findings, the extended comments of each of the eleven (of 16) attending CAG members, and the Supes’ individual first round questions. Almost everyone in the room was lining up to give invited citizen input when we exited. I came away with the following.
- The whole effort to get a new MJ ordinance is promoted on the basis of making MMJ available to the needy “patients” in the county who could not afford to pay very much if anything for their “medicine”, and whose needs would only be satisfied with in-county grown weed.
- While several CAG members gave lip service to the need for quality and consistent MMJ, no one was a bit concerned about how the stuff would be made into medicine in the interval between harvesting it and getting it to the “dispensaries”. The new ordinance will not go into the pharmaceutical details of regulating the processing that will assure quality and consistence.
- Apparently all the MMJ would be grown and dispensed on a “non-remuneration” basis, in short, it would be gifted to those in need. And the whole enterprise was by implication to be a great humanitarian undertaking. No one uttered a word about getting in there firstest with the mostest to bring home the filthy lucre for the country farmers.
- In spite of #3, many CAG members cited the need for urgency on Supes part to get the ordinance on the books. Why? Because of the intense statewide competition from thousands of other growers who will put our county “farmers” at a disadvantage should they be tardy in entering those profit-free markets. But of course, the only place where such competition would give concern are the RMJ markets, which no one pointed out in their comments. If all those out-of-county growers were really hell bent on supplying MMJ, then our patients would have no problem getting their medicines, no matter how tardy our Supes.
- The consultant’s intro summary gave the impression that there was “strong agreement” on most of the points CAG considered, with possibly some set-back and zoning questions left hanging. A number of individual CAG members pointedly disagreed with the consultant’s interpretation as reflected in the draft report. All claimed that there was a lot of talking past each other during the meetings because common understandings were neither sought nor established.
- No rocket science was needed to figure out that the whole affair was focused on how to get an ordinance that would 1) let in as many small RMJ growers as possible, on 2) as many parcels as possible, and at all costs to 3) keep out the big growers who would put everyone else out of business. The bottom line was to legitimize as many of the current illegal growers as possible.
- The humorous part were the exhortations from some pro-MJ CAG members for “strong and enforceable regulations” that would extinguish the “black market” and bring everyone out into the open and profitable sunshine, happily paying their compliance costs and taxes.
- There was nary a mention that this brave new MJ world would be self-funding, and not require county taxpayers to support regulating our newly legalized pot industry.
rebanesruminations.com 
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