HomeMy WebLinkAbout5-5-11 A Stewart letterApril 20, 2011
Dear Supervisor ,
Thank you for your caring patriotic service on behalf of the citizens of Butte County. I truly appreciate all your
time and energy devoted to deciding extremely critical issues that deal with the health, safety and constitutional
privileges we enjoy in this rivonderful place that !call "home".
I have (earned recently that the agenda for the May 4, 2011 Board of Supervisors meeting includes the
potential adoption and enactment of a Medical Marijuana Cultivation Ordinance {MMCO), drafted by County
Staff, I believe the intentions of the Board have the good of the citizens in mind, however, I am writing to
respectfully and sincerely request that the ordinance NOT be approved as written. My reasons are as follows:
1. Butte County is much better than the drafted ordinance represents. We, the citizens of Butte County can
do better than this. As it stands now, the ordinance lanauaae is so weak that there may as well be no
ordinance at all.
2. The ex ressed ur ose and intent of the MMCO is to balance the needs of atients AND the health
safet and welfare of residents and businesses of Count .The proposed regulations heavily favor patients
and do NOT protect the interests of the rest of the citizens of our county.
3. The ex ressed ur ose and intent of the MMCO states that it does not allow non-medicinal or ilia al
cultivatinn distribution or consum tion of marijuana. The land use allowances granted by the current language
in fact enables marijuana production to become a huge illegal business venture, reaching well beyond easing
the bodily- pain suffered by legitimately ill citizens:
4. Section 34-A5 describes the re istration and documentation re uirements of persons who wish to
produce marijuana. Then item {c) of the same section declares that persons cultivating certain numbers of
mature and or immature plants are NOT to be required to meet these requirementsl This is a direct
contradiction of the proposed requirements.
5. Section 34A-18 states that nothin in the MMCO will re uire the enforcement of any provision of the
ordinance dealing with unlawful cultivation of marijuana. It makes no sense to have an ordinance that is not
meant to be enforced!
In my opinion, the ordinance proposed to strengthen the County's position in controlling the use of marijuana
does the exact opposite: It enables more people to take advantage of the County's weakened ability to control
it. This ordinance is actually unenforceable. Butte County will find the production of marijuana mushrooming
out of control with the acceptance of this ordinance.
I sincerely hope that more time will be granted to strengthen the proposed ordinance before it is adopted.
Thank you for your timely consideration.
Sincerely,
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