“It’s been a painful lesson that it’s much harder to pare back than it is to loosen things up.”
The statement made by 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann on Tuesday summed up the supervisors’ months-long struggle to reform the county cannabis ordinances after they were criticized for being too relaxed. At their height, licenses in Santa Barbara County accounted for 35 percent of all cannabis acreage in California.
The board voted to implement new restrictions affecting North County — the harshest is a total ban on commercial pot grows in areas zoned as existing developed rural neighborhoods (EDRNs). The move was controversial and preceded by dozens of growers and residents from Tepusquet Canyon, an EDRN in North County, who either begged the board to adopt the ban or to reject it.