Reality of legal weed in California: Illegal grows, deaths Los Angeles Times

Table Of Content

• ‘$250,000 cash in a brown paper bag.’ How legal weed unleashed corruption in California
• California
• ‘Rivers in the sky’ have drenched California, yet even more extreme rains are possible
• California promised ‘social equity’ after pot legalization. Those hit hardest feel betrayed
• What is Sununu’s position on cannabis?
• House of Cannabis - Tacoma

Wage theft is so common laborers circulate lists of “no pay” farms. State Assemblyman Thurston “Smitty” Smith (R-Apple Valley) this winter proposed restoring felony charges for large-scale growers, but with no co-signers he yanked the doomed bill before its first hearing. His substitute measure to increase civil fines passed the Assembly but failed to progress in the Senate. Five years after the first arrests, most of those charged have yet to go to trial. A federal official connected with the case, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said Chinese authorities won’t cooperate on such investigations and U.S. Justice Department supervisors in Washington, D.C., did not give the green light to continue digging.

‘$250,000 cash in a brown paper bag.’ How legal weed unleashed corruption in California

He bought large parcels outside Mount Shasta Vista, bulldozing one 620-acre tract so barren the scar is visible from space. Dubbed the “Cinder Pit” by police, it contained 82 plots, each with two greenhouses and a shed. Tenants arrested during drug raids told police they had leased their plots for $10,000 a season. California’s legalization of recreational cannabis in 2016 ushered in a multibillion-dollar industry estimated to be the largest legal weed market in the world. But many of the promises of legalization have proved elusive.

California

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It takes them out of their normal environment and places them in several chic lounges that only Hall of Flowers can provide. Consumption enables connection, memory, and experience through the products, which is the goal of the brands who come out to Hall of Flowers. “Great tradeoff,” she said, with apparent sarcasm, “for some California college kids to be able to puff on a pen filled with a cannabis product in public. Hoop houses not only fill farm lots, but backyards and front yards. They stand by the schools, behind the auto parts store, beside the Catholic chapel.

‘Rivers in the sky’ have drenched California, yet even more extreme rains are possible

Although the state has sanctioned licensed growers for violating regulations, The Times found the state attorney general has never invoked civil penalties for unlicensed cultivation. The Department of Cannabis Control used the tool once — against a Shasta County school janitor and his wife accused of leasing their land for nine illegal greenhouses. Neither a ban nor lack of water dissuaded outlaw growers from erecting hoop houses on the desert sands of Lucerne Valley, where the state mapped 13 cannabis plots before legalization and The Times last year found 935 greenhouses. A still-running campaign by the San Bernardino County sheriff in 12 months razed more than 8,200 greenhouses without running out of targets. Although no hard data exist on the size of the illegal market, it is indisputably many times larger than the licensed community. The Times’ analysis of satellite images shows that unlicensed operations in many of California’s biggest cultivation areas, such as parts of Trinity and Mendocino counties, outnumbered licensed farms by as much as 10 to 1.

California promised ‘social equity’ after pot legalization. Those hit hardest feel betrayed

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By the end of the year, he intends to bring another million square-feet of cannabis online in this greenhouse, where the roughly 45 percent profit margin of its harvest dwarfs the single-digit profits of the celery crop being grown next door. Farrar, whose first cannabis grow was a 2-by-3-foot plot in his apartment closet at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is moving ahead with legalization in mind. California and 20 other states, plus the District of Columbia, have legalized cannabis for adult recreational use, even though the federal government still considers it a drug on par with heroin and fentanyl. An estimated two-thirds of California’s cannabis market — by far the nation’s largest — is still black market.

Ravaged by wildfire, it is not rebuilt homes but the shiny plastic of greenhouses that gleams between the charred black skeletons of the forest. The company has managed to secure both cultivation and retail licenses, which big and small farmers agree are far too few in number. There are roughly 75 times more places to buy an alcoholic drink in California than a legal joint.

Li, who has a PhD in vision science from UC Berkeley, used money from unindicted conspirators in China to turn nine suburban homes in San Bernardino County into clandestine grow houses. Court records laid out the mechanics of a sophisticated scheme that ran until 2019, involving stolen electricity, straw buyers, fake leases, purloined passport information and money moved from China to shell companies in the U.S. One of the participants was a confessed money-laundering courier for a Mexican narcotics ring.

In New Hampshire, the path for cannabis legalization is at a crossroads

Farrar, a garrulous proselytizer on behalf of cannabis and his company, said it is the second-largest greenhouse complex in the United States and the single largest dedicated to cannabis. What is harvested from these temperature-controlled cathedrals to weed is not necessarily meant to remain here in Farrar’s business plans. The House has passed a number of versions of the cannabis legalization bill this term, as lawmakers quarrel over how closely to adhere to Sununu’s vision. We believe in improving lives through the goodness of cannabis.

House of Cannabis - Tacoma

In a series of occasional stories, we’ll explore the fallout of legal pot in California. A large illegal grow had crept onto his 800-acre timber tract. Manners waited for winter, when he knew the operation would be dormant, and hiked up the hillside. He found trees felled for a half-acre clearing, three giant plastic-covered hoop houses, and — especially repugnant because the longtime grower was a leader in organic cannabis farming — chemical fertilizers spilled on the ground. Last year, the California legislature passed a bill to allow licensed California cannabis businesses to sell their products in other cannabis-legal states. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who signed the bill, would negotiate the terms of trade with his counterparts.

In 2020, with help from the California Franchise Tax Board, county authorities charged Lee with money laundering and tax fraud, accusing him of hiding some $1.5 million in unreported earnings. Prosecutors asked a judge to set his bail at $3 million, but Lee was released on his own recognizance. Manners, 63, was a pioneer in cannabis, a former bicycle shop owner with a laid-back smile and the habit of hanging his eyeglasses on the collars of his Grateful Dead T-shirts.

He has returned to raided farms three days later to find them back in operation. Det. Sgt. Cory Persing commands the county drug enforcement unit, wrestling not just with cannabis but fentanyl, meth and everything else. The five-person unit is down to two, Persing and another sergeant, so they must call for volunteers from the jail to staff raids. Since 2016, at least eight cannabis growers in Siskiyou County have died of carbon monoxide poisoning as they tried to keep warm with charcoal braziers and unventilated generators, according to coroner records obtained by The Times. The body of a ninth carbon monoxide victim was found last year dumped on the side of Interstate 5, wrapped in his sleeping bag.

Labor exploitation is common, and conditions are sometimes lethal. The Times documented more than a dozen deaths of growers and workers poisoned by carbon monoxide. The raids rip out plants and snare low-wage laborers while those responsible, some operating with money from overseas, remain untouched by the law, hidden behind straw buyers and fake names on leases. After years of wavering between skepticism and outright opposition to cannabis legalization in New Hampshire, Sununu surprised many in May 2023 when he released a statement saying he would sign a legalization bill if it met certain criteria. But the governor has already raised issues with the bill, arguing that it does not follow his vision of establishing retail cannabis outlets that are tightly controlled by the state.

The UCETF was created by Newsom in October 2022, and since then it has seized $371,199,431 in unlicensed cannabis product from a total of 236 warrants. The California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) recently published an announcement regarding recent cannabis taskforce seizures. As of April 11, the Unified Cannabis Enforcement Taskforce (UCETF) seized over $53,620,600 in illegal cannabis during the first quarter of 2024 (spanning between January 1, 2024-March 31, 2024). The state’s new Office of Cannabis Management admitted last month that it likely won’t be ready to issue full-scale licenses in time to launch cannabis sales by early next year, which was the initial goal.