The governor said he is committed to supporting the state’s legal cannabis market and that tackling the illegal market is key to achieving that goal. Unlicensed cannabis is cheaper, he said, and is therefore undercutting the purchase of legal cannabis in the state, which is more expensive, in part because it is regulated and taxed.
“The illicit market endangers our communities, our environment, and California’s growing legal and safer cannabis industry,” Mr. Newsom said. “California’s legal market also produces billions of dollars for our state economy, and we’ll continue to support the businesses that are engaged in this industry the right way, by taking down the criminal operations undermining their success.”
In operations targeting two state parks, more than 5,200 illegal cannabis plants were removed. No arrests were reported.
Officers seized eight weapons and cut down 3,584 plants in Saddleback Butte State Park in Antelope Valley, northeast of Los Angeles, at three grow sites. Officials said the plants weighed about 9,620 pounds.
In Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park, north of Bakersfield in the Central Valley, six firearms were seized, and 1,572 plants weighing about 3,757 pounds were destroyed.
Armando Quintero, director of California State Parks, said in the governor’s press release that as the largest park system in the nation, officials are responsible for protecting vital and valuable natural and cultural resources, including the removal of pot plants.
“Preventing environmental damage caused by illegal cannabis cultivation inside park boundaries and on adjacent private property is a priority for our law enforcement team,” he said. “It’s also an important component of our overall strategy for keeping parks and their local communities safe and protected for future generations.”
Agencies participating in the raids included the state’s Department of Cannabis Control, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the state’s Department of Justice, and the California National Guard Counter Drug Task Force, among others.
Since January, the state’s Unified Cannabis Enforcement Task Force—which includes the agencies involved in the recent raids—has seized what they estimated was $120 million in illegal cannabis products, including nearly 73,300 pounds of unlicensed marijuana.
It is unclear how the value of cannabis products was determined, as the street price of outdoor grown pounds is currently hovering between $300 and $400, but the estimate provided by the task force amounts to nearly $1,700 per pound. A request for information on pricing estimates was not returned prior to publication.
Additionally, 123,000 illegally cultivated plants have been eradicated, according to the task force.
Nicole Elliott, director of the cannabis control department, said operations targeting illegal grow sites will continue, as the state seeks to mitigate unlicensed grows.
“The recent operation … led by California State Parks underscores the task force’s strong commitment to protecting our environment and supporting the licensed cannabis industry in California.”
Mr. Newsom created the task force in 2022 as a collaboration between state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies to safeguard the environment, protect consumers, and deprive illegal cannabis growers and transnational criminal organizations of revenues generated by illicit activity.
Additionally, he created the Cannabis Watershed Protection Program in 2019 to target illegal cannabis activity impacting areas that collect or drain water into bodies of water, like rivers, lakes, or streams, across the state.
The governor has instructed a number of state agencies to “aggressively target organized criminal enterprises” benefiting from illegal cannabis production, according to the press release.
Unlicensed cannabis operations also create concern for state officials because they oftentimes use illegal pesticides that can contaminate waterways and impact the environment. Some have also been found to have significant labor law violations and human trafficking, with vulnerable workers and illegal immigrants exploited for cheap labor, the governor’s office noted in the press release.
While growing cannabis on public lands was common decades ago in northern California, the arrival of legalized medicinal cannabis in 1996 changed the business landscape and moved many growers from the state and national forests to private land in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
However, new regulations that arose in 2016 with the passage of Proposition 64, which legalized recreational cannabis but significantly increased regulations on cultivation, led some counties—including Humboldt and Tehama, among others—to begin using satellite technology to identify unlicensed activity and place liens on properties with illegal grows.
Multiple licensed and unlicensed growers in Mendocino County who spoke to The Epoch Times on the condition of anonymity said the licensing process had become next to impossible to comply with, and the threat of property liens was causing some cultivators to return to the “old days” of planting on public lands.
