Editor’s note: The print edition of this issue had a “NO” in the title. Because this measure asks voters to decide whether new additional marijuana businesses should be allowed in the county, our vote is YES.
Is there anyone else out there that yearns for the return of a pro-business Republican party? Where have the champions of the invisible hand of the free market gone? They’re certainly not sitting in the halls of the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners, where voters are being treated to another Phil Henderson and Patti Adair-concocted measure to cater to a micro-set of voters impacted by an agricultural product that they deem sinful.
This measure is the result of the very real and costly failures the county has suffered at the state level around marijuana and the very real prospect that continued efforts in this area will be deemed unconstitutional through litigation. To stop this, the commissioners need a local measure to stem their anti-business loss. The most amusing part of the measure is the idea that the commissioners are responding to rural voters who support the measure and say that these lawful agricultural operations are disturbing their way of life. This is a constituency of folks who live on rural land and as they piddle around with hobby farms, cost the county negative $25 million, by some estimates. While there may be some legitimate commercial interests here, for the most part these are lifestyle folks who wouldn’t know the right end of a plow if it pushed them under. What’s more, we suspect that a great many of those opposed to marijuana growing do not understand that much of the “pot” they are seeing in their communities is actually hemp—which is legal even by federal law these days.
The ultimate irony here is while Henderson is out campaigning this election on his expensive attempts to change land-use law around “non-prime farm lands” to development, he’s backhanding the very industry that found a way to turn these non-prime lands to profit.
A “yes” vote on this means that new marijuana businesses can at least try to get new, legal, and law-abiding licenses approved, even while an anti-marijuana regime reigns in the halls of county government.
Vote YES on this senseless measure.
This article appears in Oct 21-28, 2020.
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Vote NO on Measure 9-134, here’s why:
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When Deschutes County asked the voters to allow Marijuana growing in Rural Deschutes County, the people who live there voted against it. The measure only passed because Bend had more voters. The rural population is now even more against this. Here’s why:
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Many wells have run dry around Marijuana greenhouses all over Rural Deschutes County. Depending on size, a Marijuana greenhouse uses as much water as 50 – 150 houses. It costs 2,000 – 20,000 to dig a new well or deepen an existing one. This is not fair to the neighbors. It is also an extremely poor use of water in a High Desert in the 4th year of drought.
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These operations waste prime farmland. Contrary to the writer’s allegation that it costs the county 25 Million to live on rural land, many ranchers and farmers in Rural Deschutes County contribute greatly to the wealth of the county by producing hay, beef, vegetables, eggs, and many other agricultural products. They work hard to improve the land and make it beautiful. Marijuana operations, by comparison, do not care about the land. It takes a lot of effort and money to grow hay or any other farm or ranch crop, and they are only interested in what they grow in their greenhouse and let the rest of the land go to weeds and waste. So it is actually the Marijuana farmers who depreciate the land, not the other way around. They also depreciate property values because many potential buyers do not want to buy property next to one of these “farms”.
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It also makes no sense to grow more. Last year alone, Oregon produced enough Marijuana for the next 6 years, according to OLCC who oversees Marijuana production for the state of Oregon (see 2019 Supply and Demand Legislative Report FINAL for Publication(PDFA).pdf, page 13, paragraph 1). Marijuana has a one-year shelf life, after that it is not legal to sell it in stores anymore, so any new production would only go into the black market and not produce any more tax revenue.
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Hemp is what is grown outside on farmland. Marijuana is only allowed to be grown in a greenhouse.
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The Commissioners heard these concerns from Rural Citizens and opted to let the voters decide the issue. There is no “anti-marijuana regime”. There are many reasonable concerns from the rural community.
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In short, if some entrepreneurs want to grow more Marijuana, let them grow it in a warehouse in an industrial part of Bend, where they pay for their water. They can even apply for a license to have a beer garden out front or some such thing. That should make the rural community and the growers happy. And they are allowed to do that. So why don’t they, what, they don’t wat to pay for their water?
To @SUSANNERITTER13, I am a born and raised rural Central Oregonian farmer reminding you that you do NOT speak for all or even most citizens of rural areas, so excuse you.
So many false facts you’ve stated here but no surprise, such is the way of political mud slinging in 2020.
Nice solid reasoning there that we rural locals, who mostly simply want to take up an actual PROFITABLE crop, will somehow WANT to have our land go into disrepair all of the sudden because we are growing cannabis instead of alfalfa? Try again.
And stop with the 6 year over supply trope Susan. The FACTS actually show the opposite of this false narrative. One only needs to talk to ANY rec shop in town or the state for that matter to validate this. Supply has been SHORT of demand for close to 12-18 months, hence why wholesale prices of cannabis have gone UP 2x 3x in the last year for some producers.
We live in America and don’t want our freedoms trampled by a misguided conservative bias. Cannabis is here to stay, we don’t want to open a “beer garden or some such thing”, and will NOT concede OUR property owner rights quietly.
-YOUR rural neighbor