This Californian city still thinks cannabis stinks

This upscale California city still thinks legal cannabis stinks and is going to court to stop it.

In 2018, cannabis was fully legal in California, but one posh town made a huge fuss over the smell of cannabis being grown nearby. The Fresh Toast reported on it at the time, and it seems the fight continues. The small coastal town of Carpinteria is located in Santa Barbara County, California. The pricey enclave of Old Town Carpinteria is the third most expensive neighborhood in the United States per square foot, at $4,129 per square foot. With a population of 12,950, it's a popular surfing destination with the slogan “Safest Beach in the World.” But this California town still thinks cannabis stinks. And some residents want to stop it.

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Old Carpinteria is a city within a larger country. The city has a city council, but the farms outside the city limits are leftovers. A group of city residents filed a class-action lawsuit in September against two cannabis farms in the county that they say are destroying property values. Cannabis cultivation has become a huge industry in Santa Barbara. Recent statistics show that marijuana farms grow $260 million, the second-largest crop after strawberries at $811 million. But other farms are unhappy, saying they are hurting their rose, avocado and other crops.

The terpenes in the plant provide the smell and some of the essential therapeutic benefits. Currently, most legal weed is grown in huge greenhouses. The high cost of indoor growing has not only been reflected on dispensary shelves, but also in poor profits for growers. A greenhouse can produce year-round harvests, but the space required may be smaller.

The Santa Barbara Coalition for Responsible Cannabis has spent over a million dollars fighting cannabis farms in the county. Two years ago, after a long legal wrangling, they signed a peace deal with a leading growers' organization in the Carpinteria Valley. But they say they have not followed through on the agreement, which included installing the latest “odor elimination” technology.

Residents want them to use cutting-edge air-cleaning technology in their open-vented greenhouses. Activated carbon filters, called “scrubbers,” have proven effective at preventing the smell of cannabis from roof vents from entering neighborhoods. Only four of 20 active marijuana farms in the valley are fully equipped with them, county records show.

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Santa Barbara County, which is responsible for regulation, has been very slow to address the problem through regulations. There are a wide variety of crops and they are concerned about more regulations on agriculture in general. Instead of encouraging both sides to be good neighbors. After five years, it seems that patience and good neighborly spirit are wearing them down.