Lake County has a marijuana problem. Glossing it over with platitudes and feel-good columns won”t make it go away. Our business leaders sound like the mayor in the movie, Jaws: “Move along people, there”s nothing to see here.”
Well, there is something to see here. It”s ugly and it”ll get uglier unless enough people make a big enough stink. Ask the family who begged for relief from surrounding growers, then fled the county to escape retaliation, including threats to their young daughter.
Ask the horse owner who testified before the Board of Supervisors last year how his three horses are doing after they were mauled by pit bulls left behind when growers moved on. Actually, ask about two of them ? the vet had to put one down it was torn up so badly.
Ask the two senior citizens what it”s like to have a grower with a lead pipe come at them twice on their own property. Ask the newlyweds who were told by a neighboring grower to “stop complaining or your dog might get poisoned”.
Ask the people who moved here before grow season and now wish they had never heard of Lake County. Ask those of us who are making plans to leave.
Business leaders say they spent hundreds of hours in meetings with County officials to roll back the marijuana tide; well, that tide is rolling alright – right up to our front doors. I attended two marijuana hearings this year, and our business leaders were conspicuously silent.
Out-of-area businesses know about the problems grow sites all over the Lake County cause, and that”s why so many refuse to locate here. That”s also why vacationers check out of our resorts days early and say, “Forget about next year.”
Tell your County Supervisor to end this lunacy and get marijuana grows out of the areas where we live, work, and play. We either become the successful vacation destination we used to be, or we turn the county over to the drug trade and say, “Here, have at it; it”s all yours.”
Tom Guthrie
Lakeport
