In this May 7, 2019, photo released by Cannabis Removal on Public Lands Project, a group including U.S. Forest Service rangers, scientists and conservationists work to reclaim a so-called trespass grow site where nearly 9,000 cannabis plants were illegally cultivated. Authorities allege members of an international drug trafficking ring set up camp at the site months earlier.
The case highlights some of the growing pains California has faced since kicking off broad legal sales in 2018. Its legal marijuana market has grown to more than $3 billion but remains dwarfed by a thriving illegal market, which rakes in nearly $9 billion annually. Limited resources mean officials can’t keep up with all the illegal sites that are remnants of the outlaw era, when much of the pot for the U.S. black market came from the Emerald Triangle.
“We see illegal grows as undermining the legal cultivators and manufacturers” by reducing tax revenue, said Lindsay Robinson, executive director of the California Cannabis Industry Association, a trade group. “We’re seeing untested and unregulated cannabis flooding the market.” “In a state like California where water battles and drought are a way of life, that number is shocking,” McIntyre said. More than 60% of California’s water comes from national forest land.
CROP is lobbying for federal and state money to clean and reclaim an estimated 2,000 sites, a process it says could take seven to 10 years.
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