When the Plant That Is Supposed To Help People Harms Others
Picture it: sleek glass cases, modern art adorning the walls, and the faint scent of various strains lingering in the air. The guy behind the counter, with his hipster beard and laid-back demeanor, might seem like the epitome of the modern cannabis entrepreneur. But behind the façade of trendy branding and legal compliance lies a darker reality. When you step into the shiny new dispensary that opened downtown, do you know who prepared this product for you? Once upon a time, it was me.
It all started innocently enough on a chilly December evening in 2009, when a charismatic customer gave a $300 tip to me, a broke, 19-year-old, and offered me an opportunity that would alter the course of my life in ways I never could have foreseen.
He said he was a cannabis grower. He was appointed as a caretaker for his grandmother, who had a medical marijuana card for his grandfather’s throat cancer, and excess marijuana was sold to dispensaries that sell legally to other people with medical cards. They were not hard to get. Doctors in the emerald triangle were issuing medical cards with a prescription to grow 99 plants, to everyone and their grandmother (literally), and the lines to get one were hours long. He offered me a job. What could go wrong? Everything went wrong.
For the next five and a half years, I was forced into unpaid labor on a farm in rural Northern California and learned about the deep underbelly of cultivation, even in the legal market. During that time, I experienced violence, witnessed crime, and saw damage to the environment such as chemicals being dumped in the local streams, illegal irrigation, and re-routing of water for the plants. November was the most dangerous time of year. People were having their doors broken down and robbed at gunpoint on a nightly basis. People were posing as law enforcement to take people’s stash, and people were getting killed. I somehow made it out alive after being nearly killed more than once by July 2015. After years of reflection, I wondered, “How did this happen? How was a convicted felon so easily able to obtain a license to grow a drug? How did no one ever find me?” The answers are simple, but the solutions are complicated.
There is human trafficking in every industry. Legal or not. What I experienced is just an example of the many violent crimes that arise around marijuana cultivation in California. These issues are not isolated; they are rampant in the industry. But the minute that it became legal and not clandestine, the police no longer had any basis to investigate a marijuana grow, much less what was happening on its premises. It was not until the county I was in passed an ordinance to curtail people having 99 plants, and began doing code enforcement operations, that I had my first law enforcement contact while on the property, and was able to get out shortly after.
The government indeed enjoys the revenue that it brings in, undoubtedly. The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration Reports over 300 million dollars in revenue every quarter. But this legalization without proper oversights in place, coupled with the ability for anyone to participate in this market, has had unintended consequences exacerbated by greed, leading to increases in crime, modern-day slavery, and environmental damage.
On September 27, 2020, an event took place in Mendocino County that Sheriff Matt Kendall described as, “Some of the worst criminal activity our County has seen.” Three suspects from Nevada kidnapped a man over marijuana and then tried to ambush deputies as they attempted to apprehend them, requiring multiple agencies to respond with SWAT and air support. The suspects were equipped with military weapons and body armor. Rural counties in California are experiencing violence at a level they have not previously experienced, revolving around marijuana. Kendall went on to further say that the black market was thriving although marijuana was legalized. “The Round Valley area is approximately 19 square miles. Our best estimation is there are over one million marijuana plants cultivated in Round Valley every year. Round Valley is approximately 0.5% of the total landmass of Mendocino County. This is completely out of hand. We can’t possibly expect the legal market could support this much marijuana. Recent changes in legislation, with little to no planning to deal with the consequences, are placing all rural counties at risk. While the state fails to address the illegal marijuana problem, we are tasked with unfunded mandates, which take away from the work we should be doing.”
According to The Atlantic, California’s Emerald Triangle (which includes Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity Counties), grows approximately 60 percent of the country’s marijuana. Law Enforcement agencies in this area have all reported an increase in violent crime that they feel is directly related to marijuana cultivation.
The Atlantic lists two main reasons for keeping the black market alive despite legalization. Banks will not accept the money because Marijuana is still federally illegal, and growers do not want to operate legally because it will take away from their profits. The result is stashes of cash that are too irresistible to thieves. Even in the case of legal cultivation, people are now growing several plants in their backyards, out in the open, that are also visible to thieves. This has led to home invasion robberies as well and in some tragic cases, the suspects target and break into the wrong house, traumatizing innocent families.
Northern California is not the only community dealing with the effects of marijuana-related crime. In 2020, seven people were killed at an illegal grow site in Riverside County. When law enforcement arrived, they found that 20 Laotian immigrants were living in a two-bedroom house on the property. They seized over 1,000 pounds of marijuana and described the operation as being one of organized crime. This living situation is also a red flag of human trafficking.
The issue of human trafficking in the marijuana industry has only recently come to light. This may be due to media-fed perceptions that human trafficking only involves inner cities or other countries.
In 2016, a year after I escaped, Shoshana Walter from Reveal did an investigation into human trafficking and sexual abuse on marijuana farms. She begins her investigation piece by referencing a case in which, “During one harvest season, two growers began having sex with their teenage trimmer. When they feared she would run away, they locked her inside an oversized toolbox with breathing holes.” This occurred in Clearlake Oaks, in 2013. It was the same town I was being trafficked in. Humboldt County has the highest amount of missing persons per capita in the state of California. They sometimes classify them as “voluntary missing,” and many women who later turn up, recount that they thought they were getting a job, but were instead drugged, sexually assaulted, or held against their will. It is also not uncommon for undocumented immigrants to get hired to work on these grow sites, and come up missing or killed if the grower decides they do not want to pay them. Local law enforcement acknowledges the problem, but they are more budgeted and trained to simply investigate the actual cultivation itself.
When cannabis became legalized and available for purchase, it also became more expensive. There are three state-level governing bodies for legalized marijuana: California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), California Department of Public Health (CDPH), and the Bureau of Cannabis Control (BCC), which control state licensing. Growers who wish to be legitimate not only have to apply for those, but must also get licensed with the code enforcement in their county. Getting areas zoned and approved by code enforcement for cultivation can be difficult. Naturally, some would not want to pay this price, therefore they will continue to buy and grow on the black market. California is surrounded by states where marijuana is still illegal and has a high market value. Most of the in-home invasions related to marijuana involved suspects from other states where marijuana is still illegal. Even in the world of legal distribution, there has been an influx of late-night dispensary robberies and smash and grabs leading to violent police conflict, such as high-speed pursuits with armed suspects, recently resulting in the death of an Oakland Police Department detective responding to a dispensary robbery.
Crime is not the only concern when it comes to cultivating marijuana. Agencies like U.S. Forestry and the Department of Fish and Wildlife are combating the environmental effects caused by the chemicals and methods used to grow marijuana. Gabriel Mourad Ph.D. is a Research Wildlife Ecologist in Humboldt County, who concentrates his studies around the impact of cultivation on the environment. Since 2009, he has published several studies about the current impact. Regular agriculture is done in approved areas, which are properly zoned, and with approved water sources. Black market marijuana is not. Marijuana uses about twice the amount of water that a grape plant does. Growers will use areas near watersheds, illegally divert water, and use toxic nutrients in their plants which go back into the water.
Scott Bauer is a Senior Environmental Scientist Supervisor at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. He and other law enforcement work to mitigate the damages to the environment: “We still have black-market sites, and they’re still abundant, and we’ve been to a few sites in the past year where we [found] a banned pesticide, carbofuran, which we hadn’t seen before on private-land cultivation sites. We still go out and find egregious sites. I think our team alone did 150 enforcement actions last year, so there’s plenty of work to do….In Humboldt, Trinity, and Mendocino, we’ve got salmon and steelhead populations that we are trying to recover and protect. Protecting those species has been a big focus.”
Wildlife experts have also learned that the pesticides used are causing secondary exposure and death in wildlife. The fisher is a small, carnivorous mammal native to North America, that looks very similar to a ferret. They are considered to be endangered, and despite several years of trying to restore the population, they are dying at a rapid rate. Upon necropsy, the fishers are found to have pesticides in their system at a toxic level.
Addressing these problems requires significant changes. Improved funding and training for law enforcement, better regulation and oversight of marijuana cultivation, and possibly ending federal prohibition to eliminate the black market’s allure are critical steps. Law enforcement agencies need resources to tackle both the cultivation and the associated crimes effectively. Community education on human trafficking can help reduce occurrences and make people aware of the dangers before they fall victim.
Regulation with actual oversight can cut down on unpermitted grows and environmental damage. Agencies like the U.S. Forestry Service and the Department of Fish and Wildlife are already working to combat these issues, but they need more support.
The potential benefits of marijuana are undeniable, especially as an alternative to pharmaceuticals in a country consumed by expensive prescription prices and an opioid crisis. However, legalization alone will not fix all the problems surrounding marijuana. Black markets and human trafficking exist in many industries, legal or not. It is crucial to implement comprehensive measures to mitigate these negative effects.
If California can address the challenges associated with cultivation — crime, human trafficking, and environmental damage — while maintaining the revenue benefits, the state could set a model for the rest of the country. By getting serious about eliminating or highly reducing these negative effects, the promise of marijuana as a beneficial plant can be realized without the significant harm that currently accompanies its large-scale cultivation.
