Sunday’s Letters to the Editor

No subsidy for pot

EDITOR: The cannabis industry is experiencing a classic problem of oversupply — falling prices. On Jan. 5, the Board of Supervisors explored tax relief, while some growers threatened to avoid paying taxes by returning to the black market (“County supervisors to explore cannabis tax revision,” Jan. 6). Both groups ignored the fact that the county has applied for $5.5 million in state equity grants to help pay cultivator permit and licensing costs.

Despite firestorms and a pandemic that have kept customers away from Sonoma County businesses, no special tax treatment has been proposed for hotels, restaurants or grape growers.

Cannabis had a bumper crop in 2020, cultivators applied for additional permits, and they increased production in 2021. The market responded to this oversupply with falling prices. Such is business.

Likewise, grape growers had a bumper crop in 2018, resulting in 2019 price declines. Then, the August firestorm struck, and the 2020 grape crop was lost to smoke taint. Although unable to sell our grapes, we paid our farming costs, taxes and grape commission fees — which, like the cannabis tax, are not based on gross revenue.

Taxes are a business expense — other taxpayers should not be expected to subsidize the cannabis industry.

JUDITH OLNEY

Healdsburg

A lesson in unity

EDITOR: On Dec. 7, I was at Pearl Harbor for the 80th anniversary of the attack that drew the U.S. into World War II.

There was much reflection on how the vast majority of Americans, long and deeply divided over the agonizing choice between going to war or doing everything possible to stay out of it, came together. Through shared resolve, ingenuity, sacrifice and can-do determination, they turned back monstrous threats to the wellbeing of our nation and the world.

You can see what’s coming. Today, as the U.S. is ground down by existential threats from domestic to international to atmospheric, we fight each other. Our children watch as from intransigent camps we vilify, threaten, mock and isolate ourselves from one another.

I trust this is a phase we will surmount, and one day we’ll once again take stock of all we have in common and all we have to be grateful for as fellow residents of this particular piece of this extraordinary planet.

Meanwhile, the clock ticks, our dictatorial adversaries in Beijing and Moscow rub their hands in glee at our internecine hostilities, and the promise and soul of America mourn.

CHRIS SMITH

Santa Rosa

Why wait four years?

EDITOR: A law passed in 2021 by the California Legislature will allow judges to suspend a person’s driver’s license for up to six months if the person is convicted of exhibition of speed and the violation occurred during a sideshow. While this new law is appropriate for drivers participating in sideshows, it does not go into effect until July 1, 2025. Why should we wait for 3½ years for this punishment to go into effect? It should be enacted in 2022.

JIM COCHRAN

Santa Rosa

Living with COVID threat

EDITOR: Andrew Haynes’ diatribe to humiliate people like me is beyond insensitive and selfish (“Omicron overreaction,” Letters, Jan 7). I have the extreme misfortune of severe geriatric onset asthma. On many days I struggle to breathe without COVID-19. I am not alone; there are 2 million Americans like me.

Before COVID-19, I was active, able to explore and enjoy life outside my home. Since March 13, 2020, I have been strongly advised to stay home by health care providers. Except for vaccinations and one trip to the drive-thru drop off with my ballot, here I sit day after lonely day. It’s coming up on two years. But I do this because I am determined to be here for my family.

What healthy Americans demanding to be free during the pandemic do not seem to care one bit about is people like me who haven’t been free for two years.

This is not childish fear. I approach this threat as a self-aware and medically informed adult. With my lungs as they are, if I catch any COVID variant, I will have the challenge of my life to survive. To humiliate me for this is just plain cruel.

VICTORIA NOPOLA

Rohnert Park

‘Doing our part’

EDITOR: Dave Stein reduced home-based solar generation to costs (“Solar power costs,” Letters, Wednesday). He misses one of the basic reasons many of us did invest in solar: to reduce greenhouse emissions. It is the same reason we invested in insulating the attic, installed energy-efficient windows and doors and a geothermal heat pump and use nothing but energy star appliances.

Granted we’re fortunate that we could do this, but it did take years of budgeting and a game plan to achieve what we hope will be an enduring contribution to society by doing our part. Reducing this effort to a cost-based analysis is exactly what the “investor” model of “public” utilities wants. It was all done with PG&E’s encouragement and using every incentive they, the county and the state provided.

It feels like a betrayal to have been encouraged to invest in our green energy production and then be penalized by a shamed and mismanaged for-profit corporation like PG&E and other entities that back this new plan. Yes, we consume, and yes, we cogenerate to offset the carbon dioxide mix of our power.

JOHN SERGNERI

Petaluma

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