By Jim Nollman
Initiative 502 was a vote about the use, marketing, and cultivation of cannabis.
It was passed last year by 68 percent of San Juan County voters; the highest percentage in the state of Washington. If we understand a mandate as the authority given to officials by a majority of the electorate to carry out a specific policy, then the passage of 502 was clearly a mandate.
The county has officially responded to this mandate. San Juan Island Council member Bob Jarman has proposed a moratorium against growing cannabis. A second council member, Jamie Stephens, from Lopez, has signed on, assuring its passage.
By this unilateral action, these reps are telling voters that our overwhelming mandate does not count. The aggressiveness implicit in their preemptive move also implies that they believe we voters need to be protected from ourselves.
The logic for the moratorium is weak.
Seeds of self-interest in would-be legislation
One published defense expresses a dystopian fear of acres of glowing greenhouses someday covering San Juan Valley. Another argument insists that this measure protects everyone’s property rights.
In fact, the moratorium assuredly protects the property rights of a vocal minority lining up against cannabis farming in their own neighborhoods. To protect those few, the moratorium assuredly voids the property rights of the farmers involved.
The San Juan Island councilman’s wife is among the most outspoken critics of cannabis farms. Her writings describe a fierce motivation to protect an historical family connection in San Juan Valley as the basis for inveighing against one cannabis farm in her daughter’s neighborhood.
She declares that this particular grow operation ruins the rural character of the valley and negatively impacts property values. Her writing is passionate, but the reader is left with the distinct suspicion that she would not be spreading fears about eyesore greenhouses if the crop was tomatoes.
Her conclusion is that no one in the county wants a cannabis farm in their neighborhood. This NIMBY generalization (Not In My Backyard) has midwifed the moratorium.
Unfortunately, the moratorium is undeniably unfair in its blanket generality.
Her county councilman husband could have channeled his and his wife’s passion to closely examine whether existing regulations for impacts on environment, light, noise, water, farmland, wetlands, etc. are sufficient as is. Instead he proposed the moratorium, with the help of a few outspoken property rights conservatives looking over his shoulder.
We citizens are left to play defense against a process right out of Alice in Wonderland: moratorium motion first, discussion after.
Cart before regulatory horse
Even if a lively countywide discussion had found the current regs insufficient, due process still demands that, first, existent regs be adapted to fit a countywide need. Instead, the county council hands us a closure that oppressively victimizes farmers already invested in a highly regulated vocation, and whose fatal mistake was following existing regs.
Appearances are everything in politics. To conflate one’s own private property issue with everybody else’s leaves the impression that hubris has trumped due process.
It’s too easy to draw a straight line between the wife’s complaint and the husband’s moratorium. That line is a glaring indicator of a conflict of interest.
In a fair world, legislation should never have the look-and-feel of a NIMBY action that turns a deaf ear to a voters’ mandate. In a fair world, San Juan County rep Mr. Jarman, would recuse himself.
The citizens of this county may indeed want a discussion about the future oversight of cannabis farming. But let’s first eliminate the heavy-handed threat of moratorium so it doesn’t loom over the proceedings like a loaded weapon.
New frontier for agriculture
What might be discussed?
Although current regs are exhaustive, some unanticipated issues have indeed come to light since the farms actually plopped down in certain neighborhoods, altering prior conceptions of the landscape. For just one example, are these really farms, or are they farms in name only, in the way a salmon farm is not a farm?
Some argue that they are so dependent on high-energy production methods that light industry might be a more accurate designation?
If such issues as this one do prod us to a next discussion, let’s be sure it’s not more of what we’ve had so far: a gambit where the complaints of a few produce self-serving regulations.
That next discussion needs to start with the fact that cannabis is legal. Can we all agree that any effort to make it illegal, again, is a different discussion.
Tell the County Council how you feel; email addresses here:
bobja@sanjuanco.com
jamies@sanjuanco.com
Rickh@sanjuanco.com
— Editor’s note: Author, musician, and acoustician, Jim Nollman’s most recent job was as consultant on a U.S. Navy program to protect whales during sonar exercises. His family has lived on San Juan Island since before “the boom,” and identifies an “ignored mandate” as motivation for weighing in on the issue of marijuana in San Juan County.
