An unrelenting barrage of citizen complaints, contentious hearings, lawsuits, a bitter election campaign, and a last-ditch request for a federal investigation has finally brought the Board of Supervisors to a critical vote on how and whether to put the lid on the cannabis industry in what some residents are calling “CannaBarbara County.”
Not since the heyday of Big Oil has an industry so divided residents here — with the difference that, in the wake of the 1969 oil spill and under pressure from a burgeoning environmental movement, the county government vigorously regulated oil and gas development, accepting more drilling, but on its own stringent terms. In 1990, the county was instrumental in strengthening the federal Clean Air Act to give local agencies jurisdiction over offshore platforms for the first time.
By contrast, in 2018, the county Board of Supervisors overrode the findings of “significant impacts” from future clusters of cannabis operations, including “offensive odors,” and approved an ordinance that was designed to promote “a robust and economically viable legal cannabis industry.”