Grants Pass shouldn't ban outdoor pot growing

A pot plant in deep leaf mulch, the best for stopping weeds and feeding soil

Honorable Councilors and Manager:

I read inthe Daily Courier that you want to make it illegal to grow marijuana outdoors in Grants Pass, even in a greenhouse. 

You say that it’s because some people can’t stand the smell.  There are other plants that stink, some powerfully.  Not all pot plants stink of skunk.  Some are piney; some smell like perfume; some have little odor.  And a properly vented greenhouse can send most of the smell over people’s heads.  If you want to control plants with noxious odors, you could do a nuisance ordinance forbidding plants that emit noxious odors outside the property.  Or tell people it’s a civil matter; take the neighbor to court (as you do with theft and kidnapping!)

Growing 4 large, full-sun plants indoors is difficult, hard on a house, takes a room most people don’t have, and is expensive, with grow lights and electricity that will compete with air conditioners for power on the grid.  Why should we have to buy powerful lights and electricity when we have sunlight?  Why should we have to buy expensive filters for the very necessary ventilation of grow rooms?

You want to make it illegal for poor people to grow pot.  It is no comfort that our police chief says that it will be enforced by complaint only.  That only allows for unequal enforcement of the law.  We already get almost no enforcement against litter and weeds in poor neighborhoods, where it is dangerous to complain anyways, about things that are obvious to anyone who looks. 

Poor people who are afraid to complain about their neighbors will get no protection from this law, and can expect no protection when our complaints about trash and weeds are ignored.  The auditors you hired told you that enforcement by complaint isn’t enforcement; doesn’t work; and is unfair to citizens.  But you’ve ignored them, too.

Likewise, the legislature passed a law allowing medical marijuana dispensaries, but you won’t allow them.  We passed Measure 91 to allow us to grow our own and buy it in stores, and you fight it every inch of the way.  Do you wonder why we don’t trust our local governments, and why the county levy failed again?

If you pass such an ordinance, we will ignore it.  Many won’t even know about it….

(I ran out of time, with two sentences left).