Cannabis Critics Unanimously Shot Down

Of all the dueling factoids unsheathed during the Board of Supervisors’ five-hour showdown over cannabis this Tuesday, perhaps the most jaw-dropping is that Santa Barbara County posted absolutely no violations of clean-air standards for ozone this past year. That hasn’t happened in 40 years. In 1991, by contrast, there were 101. This tidbit is generally important because ozone is better known as smog, suggesting that the skies over Santa Barbara have gotten significantly cleaner.

Critics of Santa Barbara’s burgeoning cannabis industry, including Maureen Claffey and Concerned Carpinterians, have charged that when oxides of nitrogen — aka NOx, a major component in the production of smog — combine in sunlight with terpenes ​— ​the odiferous compounds giving cannabis its signature skunk-like smell ​— ​they form what air-quality experts refer to as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), another smog precursor.

Claffey and crew showed up in significant numbers to object that this information was conspicuously lacking in the county’s Programmatic Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) relied upon by county planners and the Planning Commission when approving cannabis mogul Graham Farrar’s proposal to convert a 350,000-square-foot orchid greenhouse in Carpinteria into a massive hothouse for weed. Because of this and other omissions, Claffey argued, the supervisors needed to send Farrar and his greenhouse plans for 3561 Foothill Road back to the drawing boards. The supervisors not only disagreed with Claffey but did so unanimously.