Pubdate: Mon, 24 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

ALR NOT MEANT FOR POT

Kelowna's ample fields of green won't go to pot. And that's a good thing.

Agricultural lands account for 43 per cent of the city's entire land base.

The farms support a wide variety of crops, but marijuana shouldn't be 
one of them.

A recommendation to this effect goes to city council today. Staff 
recommends Kelowna follow the lead of other cities and permit 
federally licensed, commercial marijuana-growing enterprises to be 
located only in industrial areas.

On the face of it, this recommendation may appear counter-intuitive. 
Pot is a crop, and isn't providing viable land for farming the entire 
rationale of having and maintaining the Agricultural Land Reserve?

Certainly, the people who've been working toward establishing legal 
pot-growing operations on properties within the ALR will be dismayed 
and upset by council's likely move to allow such businesses only 
within industrial zones.

But there are many good reasons why this restriction should apply.

First, federal regulations say the commercial operations must be 
fully-contained within secure buildings. Right there, that seems to 
undercut a huge part of the argument for producing pot within the ALR.

A commercial pot-growing venture might well require labs, business 
offices, shipping areas and other ancillary features. Building such 
facilities on farmland does not improve its agricultural potential, 
it diminishes it.

It's also easy to see that green-lighting pot farms within the ALR 
could also trigger some considerable conflicts with the owners of 
adjacent agricultural or residential properties.

Not everyone appreciates the distinctive odour which wafts around the 
business of pot production, to say nothing of the risks that might be 
posed by having poorly secured pot farms present an attractive target 
to criminals.

An active industrial zone - which by definition can be a noisy, busy, 
smelly neighbourhood - is the best place, if one must be found, for 
commercial pot-growing operations.

Many Canadian cities, including Ottawa, Burnaby, Surrey and Kamloops, 
have already taken steps to ban federally approved marijuana 
production facilities from opening up in farmland areas.

Kelowna should follow suit and protect its farmland for food 
production, not open it to the fraught business of pot growing.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom