Cannabis Purity Peril

Open Letter to Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors:

As an
avocado grower in the Carpinteria Valley I would like to express my increasing
concern about the cannabis operations in our area. The cannabis industry has
obtained extremely high toxicity standards for its plants which are mainly
grown in greenhouses. These standards, which are strongly claimed as necessary
to protect their plants, may or may not be necessary. But the insistence on
these inflated plant tolerances has one important and harmful side effect. It
puts non-cannabis growers adjacent to their facilities in some peril.

For
many growers here, be they avocado, vegetable or even flower growers, it is
necessary to control seasonal pests on these crops. Spraying, using approved,
safe, and effective materials, has been done for years, until now. The cannabis
industry’s insistence that their purity standards are inviolate has had a
chilling effect on local farm operations. Some spray operators, whether aerial
or ground,, have already said they will not be apply to apply the materials
this year, citing farm proximity to a grow operation.