Illegal cannabis farms scarring public lands
LOS ANGELES — When California voters legalized cannabis in 2016, supporters of Proposition 64 hoped it would significantly reduce the scourge of black market weed cultivation, particularly on public lands.
Yet nearly two years later, illegal marijuana grows are still rampant across wide swaths of the national forests in California, leaving behind a trail of garbage, human waste, dead animals and caustic chemicals. Nearly all of these farms are the work of Mexican drug trafficking organizations, posing dangers not just for the environment but to hikers and others who might encounter them.
In 2018, law enforcement in California removed 1,396,824 marijuana plants and eradicated 889 outdoor cultivation sites, most of which were operated by Mexican drug traffickers on federal lands, according to the Central Valley California High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program.
“It’s a huge problem,” said William Ruzzamenti, executive director of the Central Valley HIDTA, which includes federal, state and local agencies. “They’re growing tens of millions of plants every year on public lands in California, and they leave a huge mess when they finish.”
One of these messes was visited last month by dozens of national and state officials, who arrived in the Sierra National Forest in a Black Hawk helicopter. There, in a stretch of forest in Madera County, they toured an illegal cultivation site — believed to be run by Mexican drug trafficking organizations that authorities had raided the day before.
The site was just as the growers had left it: Sleeping bags and ragged clothing. Garbage littering the ground. Miles of plastic pipes diverting water. A stockpile of fertilizers, soil and hazardous chemicals.
Nearby were roughly 6,000 springy, vibrantly green marijuana plants winding through the arid forest, oddly out of place, and doused with toxic chemicals.
Mexican cartels have been operating illegal grows on California’s public lands for decades, their numbers slowly increasing. Advocates for legal marijuana thought a legal market would stem the illicit production, but the number of illegal grows has stayed steady in California. In other states, their numbers are on the rise.
Traffickers have become more adept at evading law enforcement, and are expanding into new territories nationwide, said Mike McKinney, assistant special agent in charge for the U.S. Forest Service Intermountain region.
“They’re getting deeper, darker and harder to find,” said McKinney. “They’re going into areas that haven’t seen human foot traffic in forever.”
Grow sites run by Mexican traffickers have been found in states across the country, including Oregon, Washington, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Texas. In 2018, law enforcement raided 3,847 outdoor grows nationwide, predominantly operated by organized drug traffickers on federal lands, according to HIDTA figures.
Those raided sites are estimated to be just a quarter of the illegal public-land grows in existence.
(Los Angeles Times/Tribune News)