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Just six years ago California voters approved the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, presented as Proposition 64 on the Nov. 2016 ballot. The name of the act suggested it would legalize the use of marijuana among adults and the prop swiftly gained the support of the majority of Californians at the ballot box.
The act went into effect Jan 2018 and since that time over 1,000 provisional licenses were issued to pot businesses, well short of the anticipated 6,000 estimated by the state.
The influx of taxes that proponents of marijuana’s legalization predicted, did not happen. The timely transfers for many in the pot business, from provisional licenses to regular licenses in 2019 also did not happen and provisional licenses had to be extended two more times to Jan. 2022. Every legal cannabis grower was required to present evidence of a plan to mitigate impacts to the surrounding plants, wildlife, water and air in order to transfer to regular licenses and pass CEQA review.
Instead, in 2021, an industry that many thought would generate promised taxes saw those margins diminished by illegal growers and needed a $100 million rescue from the state. Eighty percent of the market remains underground according to Boulder, Colorado-based BDS Analytics and San Francisco-based Arcview Market Research, leaving only 20% of the marijuana business taxable.
But Prop 64 did more than just legalize the possession and use of small amounts of marijuana. It impacted a number of Health and Safety codes. One such impact on Health & Safety Code § 11358 HS2 has had disastrous effects on the high desert communities that call the Antelope Valley their home.
“The magnitude of the problem is what shocks me,” said Congressman Mike Garcia in talking about the cartels’ illegal operations in Palmdale and Antelope Valley to The Daily Caller.
“If you’re just shooting at random citizens because they’re too close to your investment, that’s unacceptable and I can’t have that,” Sheriff Shannon Dicus of San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department said.
Before the passage of Prop 64, it was a felony to cultivate marijuana plants in any amount. The proposition made it legal for anyone over the age of 21 to grow up to six plants. More importantly, Prop 64 reduced the infraction for growing more than 6 marijuana plants to a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $500 and/or six months in jail.
No other Western state has decriminalized the mass cultivation of cannabis the way California has, according to an extensive investigative report by Jorge Ventura of the Daily Caller.
As a result, many illegal plantations have sprung up in California’s Antelope Valley bringing with it murder, human enslavement and trafficking, unchecked environmental impacts, water theft, and intimidation of communities. Growers protecting the privacy of their crops shoot at residents who wander too close to their operations.
“They have weapons they shoot at the neighbors. They shoot at our deputies,” Congressman Mike Garcia told the publication.
When profits are in the millions of dollars for the illegal pot industry, the penalty is negligible and the cost of human life, insignificant to the growers.
The Los Angeles Times reports at least five murdered victims from 2020 to 2021.
The rise of water theft has also proven to be difficult to prosecute. Enforcing laws that now carry reduced penalties that do not reflect the seriousness of the crime is problematic, because judges are reluctant to issue search-warrants for low-level crimes making it difficult for law-enforcement to prosecute water theft. Ten of thousands of dollars in damaged equipment coupled with the sale of water-station keys on the black market is creating compounded problems for Antelope Valley residents.
The $1,000 per day fine for water theft is ineffective in curtailing water theft by a multi billion criminal industry.
Residents in the Antelope Valley complain that they are subjected to higher water bills when the illegal use of water exceeds allowable quotas designated for the area, causing extra costs to be passed onto their communities. A mature marijuana plant needs eight gallons of water per day and the hoop houses in Antelope Valley’s criminal grows contain hundreds of plants each. In May 2021, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department arrested a single suspect operating two plantations containing 3,800 marijuana plants that were seized and destroyed. A tweet from Supervisor Kathryn Barger during that same period showed an aerial shot of a section of the Antelope Valley littered with hundreds of hoop houses representing stolen water estimated to be in the millions of gallons.
Since the implementation of Prop 64, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has had a steady stream of reports by residents of illegal pot plantations springing up in the desert numbering more than 1,000 according to The Los Angeles Times.
At first, the operations were conducted on public lands but in more recent years real estate purchases of small structures with large acreages have fetched above market prices as owners and realtors turn a blind eye to the cash profits to be made.
The early dangers of these plantations was described by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, they are “harmful to the environment and wildlife due to the hazardous chemicals and toxic pesticides used. The illegal marijuana grows are also dangerous for residents who may stumble upon them. There could be toxic molds and fungus, faulty electrical hook ups and booby traps that can be life threatening to those who wander onto the land where these illegal marijuana grows are.”
Given the impacts the enactment of Prop 64, legislators who may not have foreseen the unintended consequences, now have a clear, though short, history the decriminalization of illegal growing has created.
“We’ve already identified the problems that this causes here in the Antelope Valley. Downstream, illegal cannabis dispensaries in the basin are a source of extreme amounts of violence. You have robberies, you have murders that we’re handling. Other agencies have to handle in the basin, and they’re all tied to the cash trade down in these illegal dispensaries. In fact, illegal dispensaries outnumber the legal ones 50 to 1. That will give you the size of the magnitude of the problem that we’re handling right here,” the LASD reports.
This article was first published at The Center Square.
