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Santa Barbara voters hoped for an economic boost, but a coalition of schools, rich homeowners and the wine industry are no longer feeling the buzz
Anyone driving north along the 101 freeway from Los Angeles will know they’ve arrived in Carpinteria by the smell. The salty breeze caressing California’s scenic coastline is gone in a flash. In its place, a dank aroma more reminiscent of a Grateful Dead concert.
In this beachside enclave, cannabis greenhouses stretch from the mountains to the beach. Thanks to the most lenient policies in California for recreational marijuana, Santa Barbara county is now the state’s undisputed capital of legal cannabis, boasting more acres than the storied Emerald Triangle of Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino counties.
Santa Barbara voters overwhelmingly backed California’s legalisation of recreational marijuana in 2016, with hopes that the cannabis boom would bring tax revenue and new jobs to the county. The transformation has been fast and furious. Santa Barbara county is now home to around a third of all cultivation licenses issued in California, despite making up only 1.8% of the state’s land, with some megafarms stretching over dozens of acres.
But the sudden influx of growers has inspired a broad coalition of frustration that spans local high schools, uber-wealthy homeowners and the region’s influential wine industry, who argue the pungent industry threatens to ruin their cherished lifestyle in a region dubbed the “American Riviera”. [Read More @ The Guardian]
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