California AG announces new efforts to combat unlicensed weed cultivation

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced new efforts to crack down on unlicensed marijuana cultivation in the state, saying the illegal weed market still outstrips the regulated cannabis industry. Bonta also announced that the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP), the annual effort to eliminate illegal cannabis growing areas in California, eradicated nearly one million unlicensed cannabis plants this year.

“The illegal market outweighs the legal market,” Bonta said at a press conference on Tuesday. “It’s on its head and our goal is to completely eradicate the illicit market.”

Bonta said that in 2022, CAMP eliminated nearly one million illegal cannabis plants operating in 26 counties across California. The Attorney General also announced that the annual CAMP program, which typically runs for a period of about three months during the marijuana growing season, will be expanded to include year-round activities to combat the unlicensed cannabis market. Bonta called the new year-round effort, dubbed the Illicit Cannabis Eradication and Prevention Program (EPIC), “an important shift in mindset and mission.” In addition to combating unlicensed cannabis cultivation, EPIC will also address the broader illicit market and prosecute crimes related to the underground marijuana economy, including labor violations and environmental crimes.

“California has the largest safe, legal and regulated cannabis market in the world, but unfortunately, illegal and unlicensed cultivation continues to increase,” Bonta said in a statement from the California Department of Justice. “The California Department of Justice’s CAMP task force works tirelessly each year to eradicate illegal cultivations and reclaim our public lands, but closing these cultivations is no longer enough. With the transition to EPIC, we are taking the next step and expanding our efforts to address the environmental and economic damage and labor exploitation associated with this underground market. I want to thank all of our local, state and federal partners for their longstanding collaboration on CAMP and their continued commitment to addressing this issue through the EPIC task force.”

The Mixed Legacy of CAMP in California

The CAMP program is an interagency task force first formed in 1983 to combat the illegal cannabis cultivation industry in California. The CAMP operations were directed by the California Department of Justice in cooperation with the United States Forest Service; the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the National Park Service of the US Department of the Interior; the California Department of Fish and Wildlife; the Drug Enforcement Administration of the US Department of Justice; the California National Guard and other federal, state and local agencies.

CAMP’s efforts are receiving mixed reviews from California’s cannabis community, with some legal cannabis entrepreneurs applauding efforts to dominate the state’s multi-billion dollar illicit marijuana economy. But others point to the campaign’s history of aggressive, paramilitary tactics, which included the use of helicopters and frequent displays of automatic weapons and other firearms, as a gross example of the government’s overreach, which has been terrorizing rural families and communities for decades.

Over the course of the 2022 cannabis growing season, CAMP teams operated across California, conducting 449 operations in 26 counties and seizing nearly a million unlicensed plants and more than 200,000 pounds of processed cannabis. Police officers also seized 184 weapons and removed nearly 67,000 pounds of farming infrastructure, including dams, water pipes and containers of toxic chemicals such as pesticides and illegal fertilizers.

EPIC works all year round

The seasonal CAMP effort will continue as part of the new year-round EPIC program. EPIC will also investigate crimes such as environmental crimes and employment violations against illegal producers. Bonta said that workers in illegal cannabis growing areas are often victims of human trafficking, “who live alone for months in appalling conditions with no way out. These are not the people profiting from the illegal cannabis industry. They are abused, they are the victims. They are cogs in a much larger and better organized machine.”

EPIC is also tasked with combating the influence of organized crime on California’s illegal marijuana market. Karen Mouritsen, California state director for the US Bureau of Land Management, found that 80% of the 44 illegal crops found on and around the agency’s properties in 2022 were linked to drug trafficking organizations.

“It is clear that there are major challenges in terms of organized crime,” Bonta said. But he added that he expects better results with EPIC as new efforts by multiple agencies later this year will “make a big dent, a bit of a buzz and a lot of noise about our shared priority of tackling the illicit market, including at the highest levels.” . ”

Graham Farrar, the co-founder and president of California-licensed cannabis company Glass House Group, called on officials to reform the state’s cannabis tax structure and focus EPIC’s efforts on unlicensed dispensaries.

“While no one wants to see the success of California’s legal cannabis market more than Glass House, CAMP is a failed policy and being given a new name doesn’t change that,” Farrar wrote in an email to High Times. “We continue to believe that the best solution is less tax and more retail outlets for licensed growers to give them a level playing field to eliminate the illicit market by outperforming it. We strongly encourage the AG and local jurisdictions to focus enforcement on illegal retail activities that today pose a greater threat to the legal cannabis market.”

The transition to EPIC follows an announcement by the State Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) last week that California Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered the creation of a new interagency, multi-jurisdictional taskforce to better coordinate efforts to combat illegal cannabis operations and international criminal organizations.

The new Unified Cannabis Enforcement Taskforce, active since late summer, is co-chaired by the Department of Cannabis Control and the CDFW, and coordinated by the California governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) through his Homeland Security division. The task force has been tasked with aligning state efforts and improving enforcement coordination among state, local and federal partners.

“We cannot allow harmful, illegal cannabis operations to devastate the environment or threaten our communities,” said Mark Ghilarducci, director of Cal OES and Newsom Homeland Security Advisor, in a statement from CDFW. “We are bringing together the combined law enforcement resources of our state, local and federal agencies in a coordinated enforcement action against these bad actors and criminal organizations.”