CA Launches Largest Movement Yet To Eradicate Illegal Pot Farms

CALIFORNIA — California's Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the expansion of the state's approach to cracking down on illegal pot farms, which the state says subvert the state's economy and negatively impact the environment.

The seasonal eradication program, which stretches about 90 days each summer, will transition to a year-round effort to investigate those behind illegal grow operations, Bonta's office announced.

“California has the largest safe, legal, and regulated cannabis market in the world, but unfortunately illegal and unlicensed grows continue to proliferate,” Bonta wrote in a statement.

This year, Bonta said the state claimed nearly one million illegally grown cannabis plants and seized more than 200,000 pounds of illegally processed marijuana under the program.

The annual program, launched under Republican Gov. George Deukmejian in 1983, will become the year-round Eradication and Prevention of Illicit Cannabis (EPIC) task force, Bonta said.

"With the transition to EPIC, we're taking the next step and building out our efforts to address the environmental and economic harms and labor exploitation associated with this underground market," he said.

Deukmejian's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting began in "a very different time, a different era, a different moment during the failed war on drugs and (at) a time when cannabis was still entirely illegal," Bonta said.

Since 1983, the program has scooped up more than 33 million illegal cannabis plants.

This year, the program conducted the following sweeps in 26 counties:

• Mendocino: 18 sites, 190,018 plants eradicated
• Riverside: 77 sites, 159,287 plants eradicated
• San Bernardino: 41 sites, 138,815 plants eradicated
• Lake: 51 sites, 97,677 plants eradicated
• Kern: 53 sites, 77,837 plants eradicated
• Siskiyou: 52 sites: 68,130 plants eradicated
• Trinity: 22 sites, 46,632 plants eradicated
• Monterey: 11 sites, 37,247 plants eradicated
• Tulare: 30 sites, 27,020 plants eradicated
• Shasta: 19 sites, 26,413 plants eradicated
• San Benito: 1 site, 24,295 plants eradicated
• Los Angeles: 20 sites, 23,492 plants eradicated
• Sacramento: 4 sites, 17,973 plants eradicated
• Fresno: 19 sites, 11,064 plants eradicated
• Madera: 14 sites, 8,757 plants eradicated
• Nevada: 2 sites, 8,279 plants eradicated
• Mariposa: 11 sites, 5,761 plants eradicated
• Ventura: 1 site, 2,370 plants eradicated
• San Diego: 2 sites, 1,510 plants eradicated
• Sonoma: 1 site, 1,407 plants eradicated
• Santa Barbara: reconnaissance only
• Santa Cruz: reconnaissance only
• Santa Clara: reconnaissance only
• Tuolumne: reconnaissance only
• Humboldt: reconnaissance only
• Stanislaus: reconnaissance only

The task force will work with state Department of Justice prosecutors, the department's Cannabis Control Section and an existing Tax Recovery in the Underground Economy ( TRUE ) task force that was created by law in 2020, all with the goal of filing civil and criminal cases against those behind illegal grows.

Bonta is running to keep his job from Republican challenger and former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman in next month's election. He is taking a familiar recent approach by Democrats nationwide in concentrating on dealers who provide illegal drugs rather than the users who support the underground economy. President Joe Biden last week said he is pardoning thousands of Americans convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law, while San Francisco officials announced a new effort to curb open drug dealing.

The year-round approach “is long since overdue,” Hochman said. "Only by hitting illegal drug growers where it hurts, by seizing their plants and their proceeds, will California be able to help the legal cannabis industry survive and thrive.”