These are the reasons why I support Measure B
For 21 years I have given my heart and soul to this community. I have volunteered with organizations that protect our environment and given opportunity to our youth. I work tirelessly to provide economic opportunity through education within our region and within the state. I have always very carefully chosen what I stand behind and do not frivolously promote ideals that would harm our community or our environment.
Some of you may wonder why my name is so closely tied with Yes on Measure B, since you’ve been told that it will hurt our community. I am going to list the exact reasons why I strongly support this measure. Truth be told, I feel that the majority of “no” supporters are following blindly behind people that they may respect, but have been misguiding people from the facts and research. Here are some to begin with.
1. Medical Marijuana and the farmers/businesses who have provided it for patients has been legal since 1996. Those local farmers or cannabis businesses have not been engaging in “illegal activity” like the opposition claims. In fact, they have been paying taxes to the State Board of Equalization and just want to continue to pay taxes and support county revenue through a legal market.
2. “Commercial” cannabis does not mean “industrial sized” cannabis. Commercial is simply a term that allows someone to have a business around an industry. This measure does not promote large cultivation or any sort of volatile manufacturing that could harm our environment. In fact, we would be looking at approximately 20 total acres of cultivation property spread across a county sized at 1.7 million acres.
3. This measure was written for two reasons. A. To support economic growth, create jobs, and allow businesses that have been operating legally to continue doing so. B. To support access for medical patients to receive high quality, prescribed medicine legally and locally.
4. Regardless of how you feel about recreational cannabis use, there ARE local veterans, elderly, and disabled patients who use cannabis for very real medicinal purposes and your no vote sends a message to them that they don’t matter in our community.
5. Policies were put into place statewide that protect our water and our environment from any sort of negative impact from regulated cannabis. Each licensee has to go through rigorous processes and inspections by the State Water Board Control and the Bureau of Cannabis Control. This IS the most regulated agriculture crop in the state and people are allowed to use more harmful products on their backyard garden than on their cannabis products.
6. This measure isn’t about huge cultivation. There are many products that fall under commercial cannabis and many businesses that would like to contribute to our local economy. The types of products include topical pain creams, herbal tinctures, high quality cannabis oil that has been proven to kill cancer cells, etc. A nursery that sold cannabis plants would also fall under a licensed business even though they would never even be selling a fully developed cannabis product. The opposition to this measure would have you believe that it only means every licensee will grow copious amounts of marijuana when in reality some licensees will just be making non volatile products to sell to patients who are in dire need.
7. When the measure was written, it mitigated the potential risks of outsiders coming into our community to engage in cannabis business by adding a residency clause for 90 percent of the licenses. This would only allow 5 licenses to be permitted out of the 50 to anyone who did not reside in Plumas County before September 2016. Contrary to what’s been said, there is nothing unconstitutional about the clause. It was reviewed by lawyers and could have been stopped by the Board of Supervisors if it had been. The idea that this will invite crime into our area is implausible.
I beg my fellow community members to please take the time to educate yourselves on this topic. We live in a time where there is enough research and enough stories that tell the true story that cannabis has amazing healing properties.
The doctors at Stanford, UCLA, UC Davis, etc. all are starting to see how cannabinoids are killing cancer cells. Almost every major disease foundation in the U.S. has recognized its healing abilities in Epilepsy, ALS, Parkinson’s, SLS, Cancer, etc. The list goes on and on.
This is a very important issue for many members of our community and I would like you to ask yourself if you’ve even researched the topic or read the Measure before making your decision. There have been a lot of rumors spread in the community around this measure which have no factual evidence associated with them and it’s time we have better conversations around the topic. I, for one, know that I am on the human rights side of this campaign. Where are you?
