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XPost: alt.politics.marijuana

In article <solq56$le7$11@news.dns-netz.com>
governor.swill@gmail.com wrote:

Kill the pot growers. Seriously. They were going to kill the slaves.

MOJAVE DESERT, Calif. — As more states legalize cannabis, law
enforcement officials say they are seeing an uptick in black
market operators using suspected human trafficking victims to
grow and trim marijuana sold in legal dispensaries.

But authorities and advocates say helping these victims can be
complicated because many don't admit to being trafficked and are
unwilling to work with law enforcement agencies to take down
smugglers and dealers.

Nine of those suspected victims were arrested during an early
morning raid in May in California's Mojave Desert. The cannabis
workers, all Chinese nationals who had traveled from New York,
attempted to flee as law enforcement officials executed a search
warrant on the secluded farm.

Speaking through a Mandarin translator, one woman said she found
the job through a Chinese website. Some listings reviewed by NBC
News did not mention specific salaries, and others said they
could be negotiated in person.

“I have no money. What hope do I have?” said a worker named Jin,
who asked to be identified only by his first name.

All the workers apprehended said they had previously been
employed in restaurants before making the trek west; several
said they were eager to return to relatives on the East Coast.
None had been paid for their labor and they were living in
cramped, uncomfortable trailers near the illegal grow operation.

A worker named Fang, who also asked to be identified only by her
first name, said she left her 8-year-old son behind in New York.

“It’s very dirty, it’s very messy,” she said of the trailer
where she had been sleeping.

When asked if she had been told the truth about the kind of work
she would be undertaking, Fang said no.

Fang, Jin and the other workers were charged with misdemeanors
and later released, according to the San Bernardino County
Sheriff’s Department. The workers had been tending to 25
greenhouses, where law enforcement officials said they recovered
about 1,000 pounds of processed marijuana. The facility likely
generated $8 million in revenue quarterly, officials said.

None of the workers said they had been trafficked, but law
enforcement officials said they suspected otherwise.

"It's common for them to not give up any information on their
trafficker, to tell us that they feel safe, because, ultimately,
we believe they're in fear of their own safety if they say
anything other than that to us," said Sgt. James Roy of the
Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

Attorney Xiaosheng Huang, who represents trafficking victims,
said many of his clients were exploited during the pandemic
after losing jobs in the hospitality industry. Desperate and
owing money to the people who smuggled them into the United
States, they sought employment anywhere they could find it,
including illegal grow operations in California, Washington,
Oklahoma and New Mexico.

In the last year alone, law enforcement officials in San
Bernardino County have shut down nearly 1,100 illegal grow
locations and more than 8,600 greenhouses, the sheriff’s
department said in a statement. This includes seizing more than
1.4 million cannabis plants, 97 tons of processed marijuana and
175 pounds of concentrated cannabis with an estimated street
value of $1 billion.

Other law enforcement investigations in Los Angeles and
Riverside counties pushed illegal cannabis seizures in the last
year to more than $1 billion, the California Department of
Cannabis Control said in a recent statement.

“This important milestone was reached through close
collaboration with local, state, and federal partners and
furthers California’s efforts to go after activities that harm
communities and the environment, including water theft, threats
of violence, elder abuse, and human trafficking to name a few,”
the department's director, Nicole Elliott, said in the statement.

California’s recreational cannabis program was created, in part,
to curb the black market and weaken drug cartels’ stranglehold
on the crop. But burdensome taxes and high costs of entry have
created a crisis within the increasingly unstable market, which
has been flooded in recent years by illicit growers and dealers
selling their cannabis at cheaper prices.

Gov. Gavin Newsom eliminated the “cultivation tax” on growers
earlier this year but counties will still be able to impose
their own such tax, which many in the industry call the single
most burdensome fee attached to growing marijuana legally.

A year ago, cultivators could get about $1,000 a pound
wholesale, but with the market saturated and supply higher than
demand, it has dropped to $300 or lower.

In many ways, California’s legalization push faced challenges
from the start. The state’s illegal market had flourished for
decades, stubbornly anchored in the “Emerald Triangle” of far
Northern California. Driven by cartels from Mexico and China,
the black market has since expanded to other parts of the state,
including rural areas of Southern California.

“If you look at the number of legalized grow locations for the
state, there’s not enough of those to funnel product for the
legal dispensaries,” said Lt. Marc Bracco of the San Bernardino
County Sheriff’s Department. “Over 70 or 80% of marijuana at
your dispensary is illegally cultivated.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/raids-black-market-cannabis- farms-uncover-human-trafficking-victims-rcna46787

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