A neighbor's view of marijuana

The neighbors experience nuisances, but not the income.

The farm environment is changing.  It is one thing to be in on a gold rush, but quite another to be a bystander to a gold rush.     

Photo from a grower.  Local crop is budding.

A friend wrote me this morning about the problems of living in a rural area, well away from Interstate 5, far up a county road.  He is unhappy about the changes taking place in his neighborhood because of marijuana.

He cited the disruption from smell, barking guard dogs, increased traffic, and "unsavory characters."   He also noted that they avoid taxes to pay for the inevitable services the extra traffic and activity requires.

He summarized his thinking by saying that they have few friends and seem to be headed for a collision with the community and seem to be doing nothing to build goodwill to draw on. when that collision happens.

These comments are significant and I have heard them repeatedly.  Marijuana growers and the marijuana industry have a public relations problem which is creating real political risk for the industry.

Bob Strosser, Republican Jackson County Commissioner, said that he gets repeated complaints from people asking him to "do something" to stop neighbors from growing marijuana.   It is a big problem, he told me.  He said he hears from both sides, but mostly from unhappy neighbors.   

Alan DeBoer

Alan DeBoer, Republican State Senator, spoke to a crowd and then further elucidated to me personally of what he called a "horror story."   A farm changed hands and the new owner began growing marijuana to replace some former crop.  To service that crop he built a barn  on his property in a place that blocked a scenic view of a neighbor.  I asked DeBoer how he felt about that.  He sympathized with the neighbor whose view was disturbed. 

This is a very curious response.  It is understandable only in the context of a situation where a businessman exercising his rights to use his land is considered a problem.   

Consider the situation:  Alan DeBoer is a Republican businessman, a car dealer.  The marijuana grower is a businessman and landowner, trying to make a profit by doing something productive with his own private property.  The businessman hires people to construct a facility and then operate it, providing jobs and putting money into the economy.  The farmer has an absolute right to build farm buildings on his property--and indeed the county is so eager to facilitate this that construction of farm buildings are allowed essentially without requirement for building permits or red tape of the kind that Republican orthodoxy complains is so burdensome.  The complaining neighbor wants government to intervene to prohibit  that businessman from using his own land in order to preserve his view over land he does not own or pay for.  Normally this would be a classic case for a Republican.  Get government off the backs of business.  Let private property be used.  Don't lock it up for the benefit of freeloaders with no skin in the game.  Be pro jobs, not anti jobs.  

Here it was the opposite.

I cite this instance not simply to report on unexpected hypocrisy, but rather to consider why a person as conscientious as DeBoer and one so  attuned to the public mood would express this double standard.   

Marijuana is still "the bad guy."  People who drink alcohol say they disapprove of mind altering drugs like marijuana.  People who look benignly on farm laborers picking fruit look at farm laborers who trim marijuana leaves as dangerous.  A politician like DeBoer sees the neighbor as the "concerned citizen and taxpayer", the good guy, and looks with suspicion at the man building a barn.  He isn't a "businessman"; he is a "marijuana grower." 

There are problems with intensive farming.  It requires people and equipment, not open space.  Instead of looking at broad open fields of green the neighbors look at trucks, workmen, equipment.   I am familiar with farm workers because I am one.  It is hot, sweaty work on summer afternoons.  The workers are not "picturesque" except at a long distance.  There are portable toilets, which are not picturesque, unless there are none, in which case the worker urinate in the field, which is the alternative.  

More competition for labor.  Good if you are that labor.

Marijuana growing involves putting people to work at high wages, which is a good thing when considered from an economic development perspective, but a bad thing for people competing for that labor.  A Republican friend who owns a restaurant notes that he has a hard time finding  employees to wash dishes.  He said hard working people find better paying work tending to marijuana fields.  Should we sympathize with his problem, or be grateful that hard workers can find jobs that allow them to support themselves, buy things, pay off college debt?  There are unexpected consequences to a flourishing industry.

There are three things which would help mitigate the conflicts:

Allow marijuana income and expenses to use the banking system. Currently they cannot.  Employees must be paid in cash.  Equipment and land is bought with currency.  This confounds payroll taxation.  It strongly encourages under-reporting of income.  It also encourages crime.  Stacks of currency in safes and hiding places are an invitation to theft.

Get rid of the opaque fence rule.  The fences are conspicuous and obvious and they change the view seen by a neighbor far more than they would if the crop were treated like any other.

The marijuana industry needs advocates.   The Chamber of Commerce would be an obvious one, but so far they have remained quiet. The marijuana industry puts small business to work, using local resources.  It hires local people.  It provides income to farm owners.  It creates local ancillary industries in soil amendments, irrigation equipment, etc.  It improves real estate activity as elderly farm owners get better prices for selling to new owners who see the prospect of a profitable crop.  Our region is branding itself as a major wine region, and doing so with pride.  The Chamber facilitates wine tourism and wine-themed events.  But not marijuana, not yet.

Marijuana is an industry experiencing growing pains.  So far some things have been done right.  Zoning farm land into large parcels with limited ability to put dwellings on them was a good piece of long range planning guesswork.   That reduces neighbor conflicts.  Southern Oregon is an unusually good place for outdoor grows of marijuana, and that is another bit of good fortune.   We were early to the industry, meaning the region has the knowledge base of experienced growers, irrigators, processors here.  That takes years to develop, and we have  that experience in place.

Marijuana's history was as a psychoactive drug for getting "high".  There is a double standard at work when compared with alcohol.  As someone who does not drink alcohol or use marijuana, I see them as essentially similar..  I like a clear head, but others make a different choice, and very respectable people drink alcohol in public, but smoke marijuana in secret.