Congress must act to stop illegal pot grows from polluting national forests in Sierra
Craig Kohlruss/Fresno Bee file
Gary Lasky and Rich McIntyre
Sat, February 26, 2022
Today there are thousands of cartel-controlled marijuana trespass plantings (grows) that are polluting California’s public lands and making many places we love to visit potentially dangerous. These operations have increased throughout California, including in the Sierra foothills and in our national forests where major cannabis farms have been discovered and reclaimed.
Local rivers, including the San Joaquin, flow from these public lands, and are the lifeblood for communities, agriculture and wildlife.
While many hoped that the legalization of cannabis would curb destructive trespass marijuana growing on our public lands, the unfortunate truth is that it has not. These dangerous operations continue to poison our forests and waters, and are now spilling onto private lands.
Trespass marijuana grows have devastating impacts. Cartel operators routinely cut trees, remove stream-side vegetation critical to many species of wildlife, and routinely use deadly and illegal pesticides, such as carbofuran, that contaminate both soil and water.
We all know how critical our water is in the Central Valley, especially during drought. Water for residential use and agriculture, an integral part of our economy, is increasingly threatened by cartel operations that divert and pollute water upstream of our farmers and residents. Statewide, it is estimated that trespass grows consume enough water to supply a town of 50,000 people for an entire year.
Moreover we now know that these trespass operations have been the cause of major wildfires throughout California. According to research done by the Cannabis Removal on Public Lands Project, trespass grows have burned a bare minimum of 285,000 acres (over 445 square miles) on California’s public lands, which have cost billions to suppress.
In addition to causing fires, trespass grow operations endanger firefighters, with many incidents of firefighters burned and being confronted by armed growers, who often set booby traps, weaponize pesticides, and leave explosive ammunition to deter firefighters and law enforcement.
Law enforcement officials commonly find banned and deadly pesticides like carbofuran, which impairs the nervous system and often causes death. Cartel operators use these pesticides to kill and prevent local wildlife from damaging their crop. One quarter of a teaspoon of carbofuran is enough to kill a 600-pound bear.
Those deadly pesticides do not stay in place; there is clear evidence of those chemicals going into public waters that connect to community water systems. The accelerating expansion of cartel marijuana grows on Central Valley lands presents a clear and present danger to public water supplies.
Our law enforcement on our public lands is outmanned and outgunned. On California’s 20 million acres of national forests, current staffing levels have only one officer responsible for protecting a minimum of 250,000 acres from these dangerous operations — in addition to their other duties.
If we are going to protect California’s public lands from the destruction of trespass grows, the federal government must increase its prevention and reclamation efforts. We can no longer accept that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management remain woefully understaffed to prevent or even clean up after trespass operations.
Congress must act to stop this destruction, and hold the cartels responsible. The House of Representatives has voted to approve robust funding for the Forest Service and BLM to address this issue. Now is the time for the Senate to follow suit. We invite other members of Congress to join Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, in urging the Senate to support the full appropriation, and report language addressing trespass grows.
It is time for bold and swift action to protect our land, water, and environment. Our communities are counting on it.
Gary Lasky is the legal chair of the Sierra Club’s Tehipite chapter.
Craig Kohlruss/Fresno Bee file
Gary Lasky and Rich McIntyre
Sat, February 26, 2022
Today there are thousands of cartel-controlled marijuana trespass plantings (grows) that are polluting California’s public lands and making many places we love to visit potentially dangerous. These operations have increased throughout California, including in the Sierra foothills and in our national forests where major cannabis farms have been discovered and reclaimed.
Local rivers, including the San Joaquin, flow from these public lands, and are the lifeblood for communities, agriculture and wildlife.
While many hoped that the legalization of cannabis would curb destructive trespass marijuana growing on our public lands, the unfortunate truth is that it has not. These dangerous operations continue to poison our forests and waters, and are now spilling onto private lands.
Trespass marijuana grows have devastating impacts. Cartel operators routinely cut trees, remove stream-side vegetation critical to many species of wildlife, and routinely use deadly and illegal pesticides, such as carbofuran, that contaminate both soil and water.
We all know how critical our water is in the Central Valley, especially during drought. Water for residential use and agriculture, an integral part of our economy, is increasingly threatened by cartel operations that divert and pollute water upstream of our farmers and residents. Statewide, it is estimated that trespass grows consume enough water to supply a town of 50,000 people for an entire year.
Moreover we now know that these trespass operations have been the cause of major wildfires throughout California. According to research done by the Cannabis Removal on Public Lands Project, trespass grows have burned a bare minimum of 285,000 acres (over 445 square miles) on California’s public lands, which have cost billions to suppress.
In addition to causing fires, trespass grow operations endanger firefighters, with many incidents of firefighters burned and being confronted by armed growers, who often set booby traps, weaponize pesticides, and leave explosive ammunition to deter firefighters and law enforcement.
Law enforcement officials commonly find banned and deadly pesticides like carbofuran, which impairs the nervous system and often causes death. Cartel operators use these pesticides to kill and prevent local wildlife from damaging their crop. One quarter of a teaspoon of carbofuran is enough to kill a 600-pound bear.
Those deadly pesticides do not stay in place; there is clear evidence of those chemicals going into public waters that connect to community water systems. The accelerating expansion of cartel marijuana grows on Central Valley lands presents a clear and present danger to public water supplies.
Our law enforcement on our public lands is outmanned and outgunned. On California’s 20 million acres of national forests, current staffing levels have only one officer responsible for protecting a minimum of 250,000 acres from these dangerous operations — in addition to their other duties.
If we are going to protect California’s public lands from the destruction of trespass grows, the federal government must increase its prevention and reclamation efforts. We can no longer accept that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management remain woefully understaffed to prevent or even clean up after trespass operations.
Congress must act to stop this destruction, and hold the cartels responsible. The House of Representatives has voted to approve robust funding for the Forest Service and BLM to address this issue. Now is the time for the Senate to follow suit. We invite other members of Congress to join Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, in urging the Senate to support the full appropriation, and report language addressing trespass grows.
It is time for bold and swift action to protect our land, water, and environment. Our communities are counting on it.
Gary Lasky is the legal chair of the Sierra Club’s Tehipite chapter.
Rich McIntyre is the eirector of Cannabis Removal on Public Lands Project.
EUROPE/ASIA
Albanian gangs corner market in cannabis farmsCharles Hymas
Sat, February 26, 2022
Albanian gangs are cornering the market in cannabis farms as they exploit modern slavery laws to avoid prosecution, the National Crime Agency (NCA) has warned.
NCA investigators say Albanians have brought a ruthless professionalism to cannabis farming that has displaced the Vietnamese as the main domestically-produced source of the drug.
After gaining a stranglehold over the cocaine market in London and south east of England, Albanian gangs have in the past five years imported expertise gained from industrial-scale cannabis farming in their home country to the UK, according to the NCA.
“They have brought in their own expertise, their own cannabis growers - gardeners as we call them, their own electricians, their own facilitators, their own hydroponic setups. Everything you need to grow it successfully on an industrial scale, they have brought in,” said NCA intelligence manager Ged McCann.
“If you speak to any single police force, the biggest issue with cannabis at the moment is Albanians. With cannabis comes associated violence, mostly because other groups are trying to thieve off the Albanians and vice versa.
“That will lead to violence, firearms and a lot of stabbings and kidnappings and some fairly extreme violence. That’s something we are very conscious of at the moment. We think that it’s growing. That is a real issue for us.”
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When police raid the disused industrial buildings or residential properties housing the cannabis farms, the “labourers” often claim that they are victims of trafficking and exploitation to avoid prosecution and deportation.
In its annual strategy report, the NCA noted that Albanian nationals were “increasingly reported as being exploited in cannabis cultivation in England and Wales, primarily influenced by changes in the control of the marketplace.”
However, an NCA source said: “They will claim they are victims of modern trafficking and should not be prosecuted. We genuinely believe they know what they're doing. They are not being forced into it. They are there to make good money.”
One case last summer saw four Albanian “gardeners” who were caught with 70 plants and 100kg of harvested cannabis in a house in south west Wales claim they feared for their safety if they returned to Albania because of unpaid debts to the gang that trafficked them into the UK.
One had been referred to the national system for victims of exploitation although the judge said their story - that they had been recruited to work in the farm by an Albanian they met in a local supermarket - required “a significant pinch of salt.”
Albanian gangs have moved into cannabis because it is “very, very low risk,” turns a good profit due to high demand - Britons consumed 240 tonnes of the drug worth £2.4 billion last year - and does not require risky cross-border transportation because it is home-grown, says the NCA.
”If someone is caught and arrested, they will not face much of a sentence. It is easy to set up. You don’t need an infrastructure in place. Put all that together with the unlimited cheap labour supply that they have got and it just makes a very cost effective way of working for them,” said Mr McCann.
The only major cost is setting up the lighting after which electricity is often stolen off the grid. “As to what percentage of the market is Albanian, we don’t really know. Anecdotally, most cannabis seizures in the UK have an Albanian link,” added Mr McCann.
Albanian gangs are dominant in the cocaine market in the south east of England, having established links with south American producers to bring the drug direct into Europe at cheaper cost and purer quality. They supply not only Albanian but also UK gangs as effective wholesalers for the drug.
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