I don't see that quote in the article, boaz, but I agree with your sentiment. I also have a word of caution for anyone in Oakland that thinks the Feds will sit back and ignore city block-sized grow ops...and that word is "You're busted!"

IMO, and yours may differ, the Feds can justify ignoring little mom-n-pop grow ops under the rubric of "we aren't spending our scarce dollars on small fry". But ignore acre-sized grows with hundreds of plants? Who are they kidding?

For those of you not familiar with the size of chunks of land, an acre is a bit over 42,000 square feet. With 3' spacing, a 40,000 grow op could have as many as 4400+ plants. with 5' spacing, it's still 1600 plants. Even a 2000 square foot op (as suggested in the article) could have 200 plus plants at 3' spacing, and 80 plants at 5' spacing. The Feds keep busting grow ops over 99 plants because if they can get a conviction it's an automatic 5 years in Federal slam. No thanks.

This "tax and regulate" idea also potentially runs afoul of Prop 215, which the California Supreme Court has already ruled precludes the State and local governments tacking on additional limits and conditions. Add a tax to grow medical marijuana certainly looks to my non-lawyer eye to be an unconstitutional restriction, and all it would take is one person suing the county to have the whole idea come crashing down.

In the end it seems that even Humbolt County has gotten stars (or rather dollar signs) in their eyes over this issue. IMO they need to chill out until such time as the voters approve recreational marijuana. Then they can cash in on their name.