The illegal growing of marijuana in Northern California, even as the state legalized the drug for personal use less than a decade ago, continues to be of concern to some law enforcement agencies who say cartel-run cannabis farms are one of the main threats to public safety.
In Mendocino County, home to 90,000 residents and more than 3,500 square miles, as many as 4,000 to 5,000 illegal cannabis sites this year alone have been recorded, according to local Sheriff Matt Kendall.
But because of limited resources and officers, he said, the marijuana black market continues to thrive and endanger surrounding communities.
Before marijuana became legal in California, he said, the rural part of the state was sought after by families looking to escape the bustling city life and enjoy the state’s beautiful countryside.
“We had people who were showing up with a 50-year plan. They were going to raise their family. They were going to build a nice home. They were going to do all of these things and be good to the environment,” he said.
But in 1996, marijuana was made medically legal in California, which Mr. Kendall said was when a lot of marijuana farms started appearing in the once family-oriented, safe rural areas of the state.
“That’s where we saw things shifting. And all of a sudden, a lot of people showed up who did not have a 50-year plan to raise their families, be good people, and take care of their neighbors.
“A lot of people showed up with a two-year plan to make as much money as they possibly could, not care about the environment, not care about their neighbors. And it came with a lot of violence,” he said.
In 2016, Proposition 64 legalized cannabis in the state for personal use for adults who are 21 or older, which further exacerbated the issue, he said.
Mr. Kendall said he’s only funded to have six deputies per shift to cover all of Mendocino County—with only two assigned to marijuana—making it impossible to respond to many resident concerns over the illegal grow sites.
“We have so many grow sites that I have my list of four things that will get you immediately on the radar now. ... If a grow site has human trafficking, any environmental degradation, run by organized crime, drug trafficking organizations, or if it is a trespass grow on some rancher’s property. Those are the things that we immediately jump on,” he said.
He said deputies don’t have time to respond to what would be considered lesser issues, noting that the county’s code enforcement team can come out and levy civil fines instead.
“The guy who has 50 plants behind his house and the neighbor doesn’t like the smell, I can’t get to those. ... We’ve got a code enforcement team that will go out and levy some civil fines against folks that are doing things like that. But it’s still not enough, we’re not doing enough,” he said.
One big eye-opener for him, he said, was when his deputies busted a growing site in 2020 that was operating on Native American tribal land. Among those detained was a 16-year-old Hispanic girl who was believed to have been trafficked the day before.
That’s when Mr. Kendall realized that many of the workers on such grow sites may be victims themselves.
“At that moment, it dawned on me. A lot of the people that we thought were suspects, we slow down and have a conversation with them, because they probably are victims,” he said.
According to Mr. Kendall, much of the larger issue comes from the Mexican cartel-run southern border, with essentially all who enter the country illegally having had some interaction with the cartels.
He said some such illegal immigrants may disclose where they’re from, have their IDs taken away, or give away personal information, which is used to force them into sex and drug trafficking as well as slave labor when they come to the United States.
“They start talking to them [and] they find out who their family is, where they live, where they’re from, that is later used against them. ... When [they] get to the United States, now they have a debt to work off,” he said.
One way in which cartels have expanded their presence in the northern part of the state is by offering large lump sums of cash in exchange for borrowed use of one’s property, according to Mr. Kendall.
“They started showing up and saying, ‘OK, we'll give you $10,000 at the end of the year [to use your property],’” he said.
But as they brought other drugs with them and got locals hooked, he said, their cash offerings turned to free drugs in exchange for property use.
“Now it’s, ‘We’re going to give you some methamphetamine, but you’re going to sell some of it for us.’ They’ve addicted a lot of people and ... they’re basically making slaves out of them,” he said.
Mendocino County is now No. 1 in the state per capita for narcotics overdoses, according to Mr. Kendall, which he says is a direct result of the illegal drug trade that has entered.
“It’s turning us into this decaying society due to addictions that are being brought up here because the road was paved with illegal marijuana,” he said.
Mr. Kendall said leaders in the state need to work together to fix larger issues affecting Californians as a whole, regardless of political leanings.
He said that in a San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting this year, San Francisco Mayor London Breed expressed a need for more law enforcement, despite having advocated for the “defund the police” movement two years ago, and that change of mind should be welcomed by the community and not ridiculed by critics.
“There are people screaming, yeah, but she was trying to defund the police two years ago. But that was two years ago. ... We’ve got to stop drawing these lines as leaders and start working together because that’s what the public expects and demands from us,” Mr. Kendall said.
He said the entire state is dealing with similar issues as California lawmakers continue to pass laws that make crimes less punishable, and that leaders statewide need to work across the aisle.
“If you only listen to the folks who agree with you, you’re not getting the whole story, and we need to get that out there. ... It’s not just a marijuana issue, it’s the fentanyl issue, it’s the homeless issue. It’s all of these different things where the teeth have been removed from the laws, and the easiest person to yell at is the sheriff,” he said.
Such laws include Proposition 57, passed in 2016, which allowed parole for nonviolent felons among other incarceration reduction policies, and Proposition 47, passed in 2014, which reduced property theft and drug possession offenses under $950 from felonies to misdemeanors.
Proposition 47 is known as the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act. The naming of such an act, Mr. Kendall said, is one way in which some of the harmful bills that are enacted in the state are disguised.
“They came out with labels like the Safe Schools and Communities Act, but when you read it, it was only a ploy to release a lot of state prison inmates. I don’t know how that creates safe schools and communities,” he said.
As the failed policies have hurt cities up and down the Golden State, Mr. Kendall urged state leaders to join him in making California safe again.
“If we come together and we have a reasonable voice and we deal with what’s going on in Sacramento, then I think that they have no choice but to come and sit down in good faith and have a reasonable voice right back with us, and that’s what’s going to solve this problem.”
