SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Back in 2000, Mendocino County became an epicenter of the marijuana movement after county voters legalized 25-plant cannabis gardens. High Times magazine, the bible of cannabis culture, celebrated the victory on its front page.
But now a backlash is under way in this liberal corner of California.
A measure on Tuesday’s election ballot seeks to repeal the 2000 decision, which went beyond California’s medical marijuana law by legalizing cultivation by recreational users.
Backers of Measure B say it’s needed to reverse a trend that has brought unwanted crime, environmental trouble and cultural change.
Ross Liberty, a Measure B backer, talks of neighborhoods with so many backyard gardens that the harvest would yield $1 million worth of pot. It is, he maintains, nothing short of a magnet for theft and home-invasion robberies.
Big grows can ruin the backwoods, where streams have been diverted to irrigate robust gardens, and diesel has leaked from flimsy tanks.
In town, the culture is far different from when Liberty was growing up in the 1970s. Today, young entrepreneurs depend on weed to support a slacker lifestyle, “hanging around the house until noon in their slippers, making $150K a year, not paying taxes,” he said. “It’s nouveau welfare. Everyone is dependent on the marijuana economy.”
Laura Hamburg, leader of the campaign against Measure B, wants to see the county become a new model for how to tax and regulate marijuana gardens.
“Does it make sense to pretend this giant economy doesn’t exist?” she said. “You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.”
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