Outlaw grows have exacerbated cannabis-related violence, bringing shootouts, robberies, kidnappings and, occasionally, killings. Some surrounded residents say they are afraid to venture onto their own properties.
A Times analysis of satellite imagery suggests California’s efforts to encourage cannabis growers into the legal market are foundering.
Laborers often toil in squalid, dangerous conditions and frequently are cheated of wages. In four counties alone since legalization, carbon monoxide from generators and charcoal braziers has killed seven workers as they labored or tried to stay warm in sealed greenhouses on illegal farms, and eight more inside uninhabitable buildings, coroner records show.
But California failed to address the reality that decriminalizing a vast and highly profitable illegal industry would open the door to a global pool of organized criminals and opportunists. 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
The rugged forests and valleys of Mendocino County, deep in the heart of California’s famed Emerald Triangle, renowned for the quality and quantity of its weed production, have an estimated 5,000 illegal cannabis farms. The grows range from homestead farms to dangerous drug-trade operations, such as one where deputies this spring found an AK-47 modified for full-automatic fire.
Manners shoved the outlaw operation back across his fence line with his mini-dozer. It returned the next spring — with unwelcome signs of activity.Soap suds frothed in his mountain pond. Gunfire echoed at night. Walking his land one rainy day, Manners smelled something foul.He was standing in a field of toilet paper.We’re offering L.A. Times subscribers special access to our best journalism. Thank you for your support.
Trespassers cleared trees to set up an illegal cannabis grow on Noel Manners’ licensed farm in Mendocino County. “They’re getting ready for another expansion,” Manners said as he documented the grow with his phone, his gray ponytail reflected in the glass of the abandoned truck. He pointed out an overturned truck camper top, and enclosures made from black plastic hung from the trees — makeshift toilets.
Similar cannabis-centric enclaves emerged across Northern California, often named after Laotian mountains or battlefields. They were controversial in the Hmong community, but even critics said the farms provided a steady flow of cash to a struggling population of immigrants.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.
Mouying Lee began buying property in the Mount Shasta Vista area of Siskiyou County more than six years ago that he said would become a Hmong community.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. Lee pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors asked a judge to set his bail at $3 million, but Lee was released on his own recognizance.
Last month, four men who appeared to be in their 30s surrounded a Times’ photographer parked along the public highway outside Mount Shasta Vista where he had stopped to document water trucks in the distance filling up at a hay farmer’s well. One of the men took out a tire iron and began hitting the photographer’s car, denting the body and smashing the rear windshield and a sideview mirror.
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. Police have no clue where he died, but they presume it was a cannabis operation. Six of the dead were Hmong.
Persing stood on the ridge road, sunglasses perched atop his close-cropped head, and pointed out Mount Shasta Vista. Gaterud earned a master’s degree in existential phenomenal psychology, took a look at her job prospects in the late 1990s, and thought, “Yeah, I think I’m just going to drop out and grow weed.” She set up a small outdoor cannabis farm in Humboldt County on the banks of the Eel River.Her plants are organically nurtured in microbe-rich soil and mulched with a winter cover of fava beans.
The glut was driven by two factors: the surge in illegal growing and the state’s issuance of licenses to grow more cannabis than Californians consume., said she believed California’s licensed cannabis crop was about 3.6 million pounds, in a state that consumed less than 2 million pounds. Mary Gaterud, a licensed small-scale grower, clears remnants of her 2021 crop in rural Humboldt County.In July, the department issued a news release heralding the removal of illicit cannabis from the market, but detailed warrant logs obtained by The Times under California’s public records law show most of those seizures were led by other police agencies. In the year since July 2021, the department’s 59 sworn officers have initiated only 26 of their own warrants against illicit growers.
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