SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Theft of water during a drought. Exploitation of immigrant laborers. Intimidation of residents by armed criminals.
A Democratic state senator from southern Oregon said his region, awash in illegal marijuana farms that are protected by gunmen, is starting to look more like a failed state.
After hearing him and others testify this week, the Oregon Legislature dedicated $25 million to help police, sheriff’s offices and community organizations pay for the ballooning costs of cracking down on the thousands of industrial-scale, illegal pot farms. Residents said the assistance is welcome but not enough.
Seven years after Oregon voters passed a ballot measure legalizing the recreational use of marijuana and its regulated cultivation and sale, the state is grappling with an explosion of illegal marijuana farms that have brazenly cropped up, primarily in Josephine and Jackson counties in the south.
Hoop houses — cheaply built greenhouses — have been erected along highways and within city limits, with many growers claiming to be legal hemp farmers but cultivating plants with illegal amounts of THC, the component that creates the “high.”
The illicit industry is generating billions of dollars in profits and is financed by well-heeled foreign criminal gangs and drug cartels, law enforcement officials said.
Jackson County Sheriff Nathan Sickler told lawmakers the cartels “have a business model: Put up more cannabis illegal grows than law enforcement can ever get. They know we’re going to get some, but they know we can’t get it all.”
A farmer in southern Oregon — who used a creek for irrigating his crops before it ran dry because an illegal pot farm siphoned off the water, all while the West deals with a climate-change-fueled drought — blames the state for not having enough inspectors to determine which cannabis farms claiming to be hemp really are growing hemp. He spoke on condition he not be identified because he worries the cartels could…
Source : yahoo
