Pubdate: Fri, 21 Feb 2014
Source: Daily Courier, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2014 The Okanagan Valley Group of Newspapers
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/5NyOACet
Website: http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/531
Author: Ron Seymour

MEDICAL GROW-OPS MUST BE IN INDUSTRIAL ZONES, SAYS LAKE COUNTRY

Pot growers will have to tend their pungent gardens inside industrial 
zones if they want to set up shop in Lake Country.

Town council decided this week that future applications for medicinal 
marijuana growing operations will only be processed if they're 
proposed for areas with a light industrial zone.

"Some municipalities are allowing these legal grow-ops within 
agricultural areas, but we don't feel that's appropriate for our 
community," Lake Country Mayor James Baker said Wednesday.

While the business of tending pot plants may seem agricultural in 
nature, Lake Country's unique geography presents challenges, Baker said.

Some small residential subdivisions of only a few acres in size were 
established within larger Lake Country farming areas before the 
Agricultural Land Reserve was established in the early 1970s.

Conversely, some small ALR properties are almost completely marooned 
inside residential neighborhoods.

As a result, if pot growing operations were allowed within all areas 
now classed as farmland, it's conceivable they could be located in 
close proximity to residential areas.

"That would set up the potential for some pretty significant 
conflicts," Baker said, referring to such things as the smell 
typically wafting from marijuana grow-ops.

An active industrial zone is better suited to such operations, he 
said, because by-products such as smell and the noise from venting 
fans would be less likely to bother adjacent property owners.

Lake Country's main stock of light industrial properties is located 
in an area of Winfield and a small portion of Oyama.

People who currently legally grow pot at home for medicinal use will 
lose that privilege in April under changes to federal drug laws.

New rules require users to purchase their supplies from large-scale 
producers of marijuana. Critics of the change say it will increase 
the cost of pot for people who need it to deal with their many problems.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom