Pot town pushes back against industrial growers
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| This April 12, 2011 photo provided by Arcata Police Department shows an indoor marijuana growing operation raided by police. Fed up with the proliferation of industrial-scale indoor growing operations taking over homes in residential neighborhoods, city leaders are asking voters to to adopt a stiff new tax on excessive electricity use designed to drive large-scale growers out of town. |
ARCATA, Calif.
(AP) -- Happily isolated on California's remote Humboldt County coast,
Arcata has long made room in its heart for marijuana, whether grown
illegally in the back woods by refugees of the Summer of Love, or
legally in the back rooms of homes by medical pot patients.
But
the mellow days are coming to an end. Even Arcata residents who support
legalization of marijuana have become fed up with high-volume indoor
growing operations that take over much-needed housing and take advantage
of the state's loosely written medical marijuana law.
The
neighbors of these clandestine pot farms - operated behind curtains,
shutters and alarm systems - complain of the skunk-like stink of
cannabis, fire hazards, rising rents, vicious guard dogs, caches of
guns, illegal pesticides, roadside dumping of unwanted growing gear, and
late-night visits from shady characters.
Rather
than throw more cops at the problem, the City Council is fighting back
in a way befitting this liberal outpost that would rather be known for
its pioneering community forest and sewage treatment marsh than
marijuana.
Measure I on next week's ballot
would impose a 45 percent electricity tax on households - with medical
and other exceptions - that use three times the amount of power a
typical family home does. The measure takes aim at commercial growers
who maximize production by packing homes full of high intensity lights
and irrigation systems that gobble electricity and sometimes cause fires
from overloaded circuits.
"Our hope is to
drive the large-scale growing operations out of town," said Shane
Brinton, a city councilman and vice mayor who has pushed the novel idea.
"I
don't view it as anti-marijuana," said Brinton. "It's a land-use issue,
a public safety issue, and environmental issue as well."
If
it passes, it would be the first measure of its kind in the nation
aimed at marijuana growers, said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of
the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
The
amount of electricity that would subject a resident to the tax amounts
to a $700 per month bill, and is equivalent to the power used by a big
chain drug store. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. reports that 633 homes -
one in 15- are using that much juice, indicating they are raising pot
rather than families.
If that many growers
decide to absorb the tax instead of getting out of town, the tax would
generate $1.2 million, or nearly 4 percent of the city's $31.7 million
budget.
Located on the rainy coast 280 miles
north of San Francisco, Arcata is a city of 17,000 that dates to the
days when mule trains carried goods from the shipping port to the Gold
Rush Country. The lumber and fishing industry here have fallen on hard
times, but Humboldt State University is a foundation of the local
economy, with contributions from niche manufacturers of gourmet cookies,
kayaking gear and goat cheese.
Since the
back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, marijuana has been creeping into
the culture and economy, and now permeates it, said Tony Silvaggio, a
Humboldt State sociologist and a founder of the Humboldt Institute of
Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research.
"This is
the center of marijuana culture in the universe," he said. "One of the
reasons is we have a very tolerant attitude toward marijuana. Word gets
around, and people come here with the sole purpose to grow marijuana
indoors..."
Unlike some other states' medical
marijuana laws, California's Compassionate Use Act of 1996 sets no
limits on plants or processed marijuana, does not prohibit the sale of
excess medical marijuana to other patients or dispensaries, does not
require patients or growers to register, and does not lay out which
diseases or conditions can be treated with marijuana. When growers get
busted, they often claim they are growing for patients.
Based
on interviews with hundreds of growers, Silvaggio said even medical
marijuana growers usually sell their extra, so the two markets cannot be
separated. "Part of the problem with the marijuana economy is it is
unregulatable," he said.
Several years ago,
people here began realizing that whole blocks of houses had been taken
over by illegal growers, said Kevin Hoover, editor of the irreverent
weekly newspaper The Arcata Eye.
"We came to
realize we weren't really dealing with hippies and the Zig Zag man. It
was this industry," said
Hoover. "More than the dangers, it was this
loss of neighborhood community. You can't have your neighbor take in the
paper when you're on vacation. You can't borrow a cup of sugar."
To get their neighborhoods back, more and more people are informing on their neighbors, said Police Chief Tom Chapman.
Police are making progress, but still hardly making a dent.
In
2010 Arcata police served search warrants on six houses and in 2011
that rose to 14. So far this year, police investigated 48 houses, and
got warrants to search 17. But only nine produced enough evidence for
criminal prosecution. Police had to buy two huge shipping containers to
haul off growing equipment.
Driving an
unmarked SUV with his guitar in the back seat - he plays in a classic
rock band - Chapman points out house after house. One bust produced 750
plants and 13 pounds of processed marijuana. Another was a half block
from a grassy playground where kids and dogs romped.
"This
is Small Town USA," he said. "The people who live here are a bunch of
working folks, salt of the earth, people just trying to get by."
A
typical grower, the chief said, is a 20- or 30-something from outside
the area, who has moved into a house with an absentee landlord. They pay
their rent on time with cash that stinks of marijuana.
"Most of the landlords claim ignorance," he said.
Marnin Robbins has seen a half-dozen houses in his neighborhood raided by police.
"I
don't have a problem with marijuana," he said. "But I do have a problem
with people turning their houses into factories and bringing a violent
element into our neighborhood."
Measure I has
no organized opposition. But Mark Sailors, who drives a pedal cab
downtown and grows medical marijuana for himself, his wife and his
mother, has long felt city attempts to control medicinal cannabis are
hypocritical.
"This is just another in a long
line of what I call Arcata's medical marijuana Jim Crow laws," Sailors
said. "They pay a lot of lip service to being pro-Compassionate Use Act.
But all their actions are trying to limit people and discourage the
use" of medical marijuana.
