Pubdate: Wed, 09 Jun 2010
Source: Daily Times-Call, The (Longmont, CO)
Copyright: 2010, The Daily Times-Call
Contact:  http://www.timescall.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1475
Author: John Fryar

NO POT ON AG LANDS

Commissioners Vote To Restrict Grow Locations

BOULDER -- County commissioners have ruled out letting
medical-marijuana businesses grow their crops in  unincorporated
Boulder County's agricultural zoning  districts.

Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to restrict  "medical
marijuana centers" -- businesses that sell,  grow or distribute
medical marijuana -- to the county's  business, commercial, light
industrial, general  industrial and transitional zoning districts.

During a public hearing before the vote, several  medical-marijuana
advocates and business owners urged  the commissioners to allow them
to cultivate cannabis  crops in ag zones, something several indicated
already  is going on.

Tom Luecke, a partner in a Boulder dispensary,  complained that with
the moratoriums or pending bans in  place in many area cities and
towns, Boulder County and  the city of Boulder are the only places
left where  dispensaries can grow the medical marijuana they sell  to
patients on the state's registry.

David Cahoon of Lafayette said medical marijuana could  be integrated
into an organic farming operation.

Limiting the locations where medical marijuana can be  grown will make
less of it available to the Boulder  County patients who need it and
will drive up prices,  Cahoon argued.

"This is a plant," said David Platt of Boulder, adding  that it makes
more sense to grow medical marijuana in a  greenhouse in a rural
setting than in a warehouse in an  industrial area.

Douglas Hayes of Lafayette said he has a 60-acre farm  in
unincorporated Boulder County where such a crop  would be appropriate,
would benefit from solar-paneled  greenhouses or other structures, and
would be far from  any schools.

The county's new rules specify that a property occupied  by a medical
marijuana dispensary or growing operations  can't be closer than 1,000
feet to an alcohol or drug  treatment facility, a licensed child-care
facility, or  an educational facility with students below college
level.

Commissioner Will Toor said he'd be open to allowing  outdoor
marijuana crops in agricultural zones, or  possibly even indoor crops
raised in existing  greenhouses or other structures already on those
farms.  But he said he wouldn't favor permitting  warehouse-style
growing operations on ag land.

However, Toor deferred to concerns that Commissioners  Cindy Domenico
and Ben Pearlman expressed about letting  commercial medical marijuana
in ag zoning districts, at  least for the time being.

"A medicinal crop like this and food crops are very  different,"
Domenico said.

Pearlman said that, though marijuana is a plant, "by  and large it's
not grown as a plant." He said growing  marijuana is "not an
agricultural use as we  traditionally understand it."

Pearlman also said permitting medical marijuana to be  grown in
greenhouses or other farm outbuildings would  raise security issues
not posed by other crops.

"There's not a lot of people breaking into greenhouses  to steal
cucumbers," he said. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jo-D