California Seizes Nearly $123 Million in Illegal Cannabis in 7 Months

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California has seized over $120 million in illegal cannabis since January, on Aug. 7, 2024. Office of Governor Gavin Newsom

Since January, California’s Unified Cannabis Enforcement Task Force (UCETF) has seized almost $123 million worth of illegal cannabis and destroyed almost 37 tons of the plants, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced.

The task force seized 122,914 illegal plants and 22 firearms, according to the statement.

“The legal cannabis market brings billions of dollars to our state’s economy, helping to sustain California’s position as the fifth largest economy in the world. We will not tolerate illegal operations that threaten our economy and the health and well-being of California communities,” Newsom stated.

In the same statement, Bill Jones, chief of the law enforcement division with the Department of Cannabis Control, said, “UCETF’s efforts are continuing to break new ground in unlicensed cannabis enforcement by leveraging the expertise and knowledge of its diverse group of partners to disrupt the unlicensed market.”

Photos show rows of illegal greenhouses in some of the 11 California counties in which the UCETF operations were conducted, including Mendocino, Tuolumne, Shasta, Orange, Kern, Alameda, Yuba, Trinity, Los Angeles, Butte, and Humboldt.

Last month law enforcement officials said they chopped down thousands of marijuana plants being grown illegally in state parks across California and seized 14 illegal firearms. The crackdown targeted a park in Antelope Valley northeast of Los Angeles and a historic park in the Central Valley.

A manager of an illegal cannabis operation in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $18,000 in restitution. According to court documents, between May and July of 2019, he ran an operation that grew more than 4,000 cannabis plants south of Rays Peak on public land.

The task force was created in 2022 to partner with state, local, and federal agencies to increase cannabis enforcement coordination. Since then, it has seized more than $465 million in illegal cannabis and arrested 38 individuals.