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Our View: Medical marijuana's tangled web Friday Jan 13, 2017 at 12:01 AM Jackson County seems headed for a showdown with medical marijuana growers, and it may take the Legislature to sort things out. After inviting medical marijuana growers operating on rural residential land to apply to be grandfathered in under county regulations that ban the practice, the county has denied all those applications. Eight cases are scheduled for appeal hearings before hearings officers this week and next. Decisions are expected in March or April. The trouble started last year when lawmakers were scrambling to craft a workable market for voter-legalized recreational marijuana. Legislators wanted to discourage the black market while trying to protect the long-established medical marijuana program with its loose rules designed to get medicine to patients without enriching growers and suppliers in the process. Federal drug enforcement officials had warned the state that an official hands-off approach to state legalization would not continue if Oregon-grown marijuana was being exported to other states on the black market. Marijuana remains an illegal Schedule 1 controlled substance under federal law. In the process of melding medical and recreational regulations, Oregon lawmakers defined medical marijuana growing as a farm use under state land-use law. That set up an instant conflict in Jackson County, where commercial farming of any crop is prohibited on land zoned rural residential. Many medical growers have been producing marijuana on rural residential land for a long time. Last March, Rep. Peter Buckley, a long-time supporter of medical marijuana, insisted lawmakers did not intend to outlaw medical growing on rural residential land, but county officials said the local ordinance clearly prohibits all farm uses on that land. Growers appealed to the Land Use Board of Appeals, which upheld the county's position. Now, growers have shelled out $1,700 apiece to apply for a pre-existing nonconforming use permit to continue to grow medical marijuana, but have been turned down. Buckley is no longer in the Legislature, and medical growers may need to find a new champion to take up their cause. But lawmakers have a lot on their plates this session, with a looming budget shortfall and other contentious issues. Picking a fight over county land-use laws may not be high on their list of priorities. Meanwhile, county commissioners may be forced to reconsider the county ordinance if growers follow through on threats to file complaints against people growing other farm crops on rural residential land.