They call us the silent generation, and there is some reason for that.

When they sent those born from 1925 to 1945 off to war in Korea we went quietly, not bothering to ask why.

In high school, when they showed us “Reefer Madness,” we sat quietly and watched it, a good many of us wondering why they were telling us about this drug we had never heard of before.

It would be some decades before we began to question authority, but when we did we produced some of the country's most persuasive spokespersons.

There were many musicians including all of the Beatles. Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Hugh Hefner, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Gloria Steinem – well, you can go look them up in Wikipedia as easily as I can.

Today we are not the most noticeable of the people who support the concept of legal medical marijuana, but we may be the largest group which quietly uses it to ease pain in our aging bodies.

And we wonder what all the fuss is about among somewhat younger people who passionately and very loudly take a position, pro or con, in public hearings, radio talk shows and the comment section of the online news media.

Most of us want medical marijuana to continue being legal. In fact, many – if not most of us – think the prohibition on recreational use is pretty silly when recreational use of alcohol is legal.

Recently, however, it's been getting tougher to support the people who argue for more liberal laws for marijuana dispensaries and cultivation.

In public testimony they've asked for what seemed to be very large numbers of dispensaries. When the county Board of Supervisors adopted an ordinance allowing five dispensaries in the unincorporated areas of the county they immediately started gathering signatures demanding a referendum vote.

San Jose, a city with nearly one million population, recently limited the number of MMDs to 10, after a proliferation of them opened in the city. That makes five dispensaries in a county of about 65,000 people seem pretty generous. And we have two cities which can adopt their own regulations.

The Lake County supervisors on Oct. 4 unanimously approved the first reading of the revised cultivation ordinance written by Community Development Director Rick Coel and Sheriff Frank Rivero.

The ordinance allows each qualified user to grow a maximum of six mature or 12 immature plants, with three patients able to grow up to 18 mature or 36 immature plants on properties one acre or larger, and still larger grows allowed on properties five acres or larger with a minor user permit.

Since I don't plan to grow it really doesn't matter to me, but I wonder how and when the growers will decide plants have become mature and what they'll do with the six extras.

Because so many of the questions about growing at home are complaints about the smell from a variety known as skunk, I wonder why people don't just grow less smelly varieties.

The ordinance will have its second and final reading and a final vote today.

The referendum group has already promised to seek a referendum on cultivation if they don't like the final version of that ordinance.

One of their tactics in arguing against the ordinances has been to call them “draconian measures.” The term refers to the very harsh laws of Draco, a 7th-century Athenian statesman and lawmaker, and his code of laws, which prescribed death for almost every offense.

The Lake County supervisors may be getting a little testy about the constant objections to their decisions but they have yet to suggest any harsh treatment of the critical citizens, much less a death sentence. It's probably time to retire the hyperbolic draconian argument.

Sophie Annan Jensen is a retired journalist. She lives in Lucerne, Calif.