It’s come to my attention that there is some backlash regarding the local Democratic Party’s support and endorsement of Measure O, The Medical Marijuana Control Act. I am personally in support of Measure O and wanted to share the reasons that I am hoping it will pass.

Some of you have written letters in which you describe negative experiences that you have had or are currently having with marijuana grows and growers in your communities. I sympathize and have had some similar experiences myself.

But these irresponsible growers are operating under the existing ordinance, which obviously is not working.

Law enforcement’s and code enforcement’s attempts to operate an effective program to control illegal grows have been sporadic and seemingly random at best.

In some communities the police have been heavy handed and gone overboard, resulting in lawsuits and claims of civil rights violations.

Meanwhile, many large problematic illegal grows seem to proliferate out in the open with no interference from the authorities whatsoever.

The current ordinance does not provide any specific means for the county to deal with the most problematic abuses of Proposition 215.

There are no funds for an ongoing enforcement operation and no dedicated personnel for that purpose. So the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and county Code Enforcement can make a big expensive show of force at the beginning of the season and then run out of steam and out of money a month or two later.

Both these agencies have plenty of other work to do to ensure public health and safety, and being saddled with the job of chasing after pot grows takes away from their ability to fight other crime and enforce county health and building codes.

Measure O addresses this problem very directly. It allows for very small backyard grows of just a few plants while allowing for larger cooperative grows on bigger and more remote parcels of land. Even small grows that comply with Measure O would be subject to mitigation if there were complaints from neighbors.

Larger growers would pay a per plant fee to the county and the moneys collected would be used to fund a department whose only job would be marijuana enforcement.

These officers, who would be trained in this very narrow and specific set of regulations would respond promptly to complaints because that would be all they have to do. They would go to the sites of reported violations and give the violator a choice to come into compliance or to have their crops confiscated and pay fines and penalties.

Measure O was written based upon a great deal of research and a professional survey that took input from many people on all sides of the issue. It may not be perfect, but I believe it is clearly a better law than the one currently in place which is causing a myriad of complaints from all sides and is not effectively taking care of the actual problem.

That is why I am supporting Measure O. I hope you will read the entire measure in detail and join me in supporting it.

Lake County is one of the few counties left in California that does not yet have any sort of working and effective ordinance in place. I believe the passage of Measure O will provide us with an opportunity to get past the medical marijuana battle and move on to other important issues in need of our attention.

Herb Gura lives in Clearlake Oaks, Calif.