California expands largest US illegal pot eradication effort

October 11, 2022
AggregatedNews
California
3 Comments

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — With California’s four-year-old legal marijuana market in disarray, the state’s top prosecutor said Tuesday that he will try a new broader approach to disrupting illegal pot farms that undercut the legal economy and sow widespread environmental damage.

The state will expand its nearly four-decade multi-agency seasonal eradication program — the largest in the U.S. that this year scooped up nearly a million marijuana plants — into a year-round effort aimed at investigating who is behind the illegal grows. The new program will attempt to prosecute underlying labor crimes, environmental crimes and the underground economy centered around the illicit cultivations, said Attorney General Rob Bonta.

He called it “an important shift in mindset and in mission” aimed at also aiding California’s faltering legal market by removing dangerous competition.

“The illicit marketplace outweighs the legal marketplace” Bonta said. “It’s upside down and our goal is complete eradication of the illegal market.”

In keeping with the new approach, the annual Campaign Against Marijuana Planting ( CAMP ) program started under Republican Gov. George Deukmejian in 1983 will become a permanent Eradication and Prevention of Illicit Cannabis (EPIC) task force, Bonta said.

CAMP began in “a very different time, a different era, a different moment during the failed war on drugs and (at) a time when cannabis was still entirely illegal,” Bonta said. [Read More @ The Washington Post]

This Post Has 3 Comments

Michael “Budsy” Davis says:

October 12, 2022 at 6:57 am

If the illegal cannabis business is actually desired to be eliminated the plant itself should be regulated and taxed as a simple farm commodity similar to grapes, potatoes, corn and hops which are raw products in the production of wine, vodka, whiskey and beer. The processed products should be regulated in taxed as recreational substances rather than by weight and volume and not analyzed as illegal dangerous drugs. The cannabis industry would be a $300-$400 billion industry if the black market were eliminated with treating cannabis like alcohol and not medicine. http://www.LVCIL.com

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Anthony Alegrete says:

October 12, 2022 at 10:15 am

If this is going to happen then we need to be taxed at a level that doesn’t force people to the illicit market because they can’t afford to keep the lights on. It has to work on both sides for this whole thing to work! Regulate us like you would crops or any other type of similar good.

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Victoria Duff says:

October 13, 2022 at 12:53 pm

Out here in the desert there are hundreds of acres cultivated by (apparently) the cartels. They flood the market with cheap weed and drive the prices down so legal growers and retailers can’t make a living, particularly considering the cost of the regulatory burden. Local people know where the illegal grows are. They can be seen from a plane. However, it seems that the small-time grow houses are being shut down while the cartels are left free to intimidate the local residents and grow their massive amounts of illegal pot. The excuse seems to be that the law can close down a big operation and it springs back up the next day. Well, close it down again! Perhaps if there is less of the cartel garbage weighing down the price, more legal operators could stay in business.

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