Carpinteria area residents fed up with the smell of cannabis production plan to speak up

Members of “Concerned Carpinterians” say commercial cannabis production in Santa Barbara County is harming their quality of life in and around Carpinteria and they say people in Santa Ynez have similar complaints.

They plan to voice their concerns at the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday afternoon.

They call Cravens Lane “Cannabis row” and they have new nicknames for other streets too.

They are worried about crime related to pot and they say the industry appears to be increasing traffic, reducing their property values or harming their health.

“Last week I was diagnoed with asthma again and I hadn’t been for 18 years,” said Bobbie Offen. “It is definatly the cannabis smell, I mean the particulate in the air.”

Her daughter Julia said the smell is often ten times worse than the smell of a skunk.

“There have been one or two times where I’ve smelled, where I think they have tried to use some kind of perfume on the air on top of it, to kind of mitigate the smell. To me that is even worse. That smells like perfume and chemicals on top of a skunk smell,” said Julia Offen.

Their neighbor, Peter Lapidus, said the smell is getting worse.

“It’s the odor. It is so horibble it gets into our house, we had to change our living arrangement in the house, we brought air filters in, but we did this — a year and a half ago — two years ago we bought the air filters. We tried working with the county to get their ear so they would try to mitigate this and they just pretty much ignored us,” said Lapidus.

They said they don’t want to be ignored anymore.

Supervisors will discuss the issue at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday.