Pot farm raid leads to confusion over Santa Cruz County cannabis laws
A pot farm raid Monday morning isn’t sitting well with the owner of a well-known medical marijuana dispensary in Soquel.
The Santa Cruz County Sheriffs Department said deputies raided a medical marijuana farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which supplies Granny Purps. They said the plants were seized because of new cultivation rules stating the grow had an illegal amount of plants growing.
The plants belonged to owner of Granny Purps, J.D. Black.
“It should have been stopped they could have stopped before they cut it down. But they cut it all down and its gone,” Black said.
Black said 1,900 marijuana plants were seized.
“Nobody was arrested nobody was cited. It was strictly a search warrant from our marijuana compliance team to bring the people in compliance making sure the grow was within the new county ordinance,”
Lt. Kelly Kent said.
We have reported that the new county ordinance regulates the square footage you can use to grow medicinal marijuana — an 10 by 10 space. But that law also states that all growers must have no more than 99 plants per parcel. Granny Purps CEO J.D. Black said he didn’t know about that part of the new rules.
“It makes no sense to pay that much rent and that many employees to manage it when they are all spread all over the county. When I could have everything right on a 20 acre parcel,” Black said.
Black said the cultivation site provided medication for more than 18,000 people at this dispensary.
“We have to pay premium for medicine from other cultivators and it drives the price up,” Black said.
The marijuana compliance team did leave the 99 plants Black is allowed to have and he is thankful for that.
“We need to get together with the county supervisors and the dispensary owners and get our cultivation rules and regulations straightened out,” Black said.
Because Black is the lease holder it is possible he could face prosecution, but he’s hopeful it won’t come to that. A petition calling for a referendum on the cannabis cultivation ban got enough valid signatures to make it on a future ballot. Supervisors will talk about that referendum in August.
