Some thoughts as Monterey County slogs toward cannabis regulation.

About a month ago, Weekly Assistant Editor Sara Rubin and I hopped into a car with Salinas businessman Mike Hackett to take a trip about 45 minutes north. Our destination was the basement of an aging business park in Santa Cruz County. It’s where the pair of military combat veterans (one Army and one Marine) Rubin writes about in this week’s “831” (p. 14) run an indoor cannabis growing operation as the Santa Cruz Veterans Alliance.

We were tooling down Highway 183 toward Highway 1 when a California Highway Patrol car driving toward Salinas flipped a U-turn and started following Hackett, who was just maybe going over the speed limit. And then the CHP officer hit his lights to pull Hackett over.

Hackett groaned and rolled his eyes as he steered the car onto the shoulder. And then, as the officer was walking toward Hackett’s car, Hackett said this: “Mary, Mary! The giant bag of weed under your seat. You gotta get rid of it!”

Seeing the look of panic on my face, Hackett roared with laughter. (He laughed even harder when I figured out he was screwing with me. Lemonade outta lemons, you know? He turned a traffic ticket into high comedy – with me as the punchline.)

You meet a lot of characters when writing about the brave new world of cannabis regulation in Monterey County. Here is where Sheriff Steve Bernal is urging county supervisors to proceed with caution on the premise (a false one) that allowing it will create more drug cartel activity in the county, rather than lessen it. Here is where meetings of the nascent Coastal Growers Association bring together everyone from weed bros (our version of the Silicon Valley sub-species known as “tech bros”) to neck-tatted delivery drivers to old school Carmel Valley growers who want to be left alone to do what they’ve done for years – grow pot, and grow it outdoors.

Here is also where big money is already coming into play, as heavy hitters in the industry have already come sniffing around, snagging real estate.

“It’s become insane,” says Gavin Kogan, a “cannabusiness” attorney and co-founder of Altai Brands, an edibles manufacturer and wholesaler that opened last year in Salinas. Defining insane, Kogan says he had a cannabis client who wanted to rent space in King City. A few weeks ago, they were within hours of finalizing the lease agreement when the landlord’s representative called and said, no dice.

“He told me, ‘We now have three offers to buy on the table,’” Kogan says. The wannabe buyers were also in the cannabis-biz.

If things go Hackett’s way, the Santa Cruz Veterans Alliance will be setting up a new operation in greenhouses Hackett owns in the county, growing plants and producing cannabis products they will sell at a dispensary Hackett would also like to open.

But what regulation will look like in the county remains an amorphous blob. The county is in the midst of writing its ordinance for how and where and by who marijuana grows will happen.

Judging by the nearly 200 people in attendance at a March 17 community forum held at the county admin building, Hackett will have a lot of company.

The county’s draft ordinance doesn’t allow outdoor grows, and it limits all else: 100 cultivation sites, 15 dispensaries, 15 manufacturing sites, five distribution facilities and two testing facilities.

At the community forum, some of those who will seek permits kindly advised county Assistant Planner Craig Spencer the draft ordinance doesn’t go far enough. Instead of 100 cultivation sites, one speaker said, there should be 350. There should also be outdoor grows permitted, allowing those already growing in Carmel Valley and Big Sur to comply with the law.

In a letter to the county, Kogan writes the plan to limit cultivation to indoors will only boost the black market. “If we want to stop bad actors, let’s encourage good actors to come out into the light and register,” he writes.

On March 30, the draft ordinance goes to the Monterey County Planning Commission.In a county that often doesn’t think big enough about what’s possible, maybe the commissioners will take this opportunity to think bigger and better than they have before.

MARY DUAN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com