9-12-17
“The negative consequences and secondary effects of the legal marijuana industry being allowed to operate on a larger scale in our city of San Diego are enormous,” she warned San Diego City Council before their vote (of 6-3 to legalize marijuana cultivation and mj factories). “I urge you not to allow any further marijuana facilities within our city.”
She said the city’s legal marijuana dispensaries, which began operating less than three years ago, have generated 272 calls for service from police for burglaries, robberies, thefts, assaults and shootings. “Officials throughout Colorado flat-out told our team the revenue was just not worth these costs,” said Zimmerman, who is retiring in March. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-san-diego-pot-20170912-story.html
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9-20-17 Over the past two years the couple has spent more than $15,000 on legal fees, inspections, tax advice and application fees related to getting a permit for their 2,500-square-foot garden of 40 plants. They doubt they’ll break even this year.
The county fees add up quickly. The basic application fee for a farm of their size is $1,240. The county’s annual permit and compliance inspection fee is $675. The Mendocino Sustainably Grown certificate, which the couple was eager to have, was $970. The fee for Track and Trace, a computerized tracking system that allows the county to follow every plant through its life cycle to final sale, is $90 per month, but that program is not yet up and running. Planning and Building Department charged $230 for property profile and records management because they applied before July 1. After July 1 they would have paid $555. For Live Scan fingerprinting, required of all applicants, the Sheriff’s Dept. charges $79 per person.
There are state fees on top of county fees. The couple paid the California Water Resources Control Board $750 for their Tier 2-Star water discharge waiver, which was less than the $1,000 they would have paid had they not hired a state-approved, third party inspector — to the tune of $2,500 — who submitted their application himself.
None of the money the couple has spent on administrative costs, fees and consultants can be deducted from their cannabis earnings. The state only allows tax deductions for cannabis cultivation expenses that are directly related to farming, such as fencing, seeds, soil, and fertilizer. http://theava.com/archives/73658
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3-26-17
Inside a vast growing facility, spanning more 52,000 square feet and humming with humidity-controlling fans, DeAngelo leaned down to inspect the flowering buds of a classic California strain called “Grand Daddy Purple.” “This is a dream, man,” he said. “Oh my goodness, this is beautiful cannabis.”
In March 2015, DeAngelo and his business partners secured a $3.5 million option to buy 47 acres south of Salinas that had 335,000 square feet of greenhouses, many of them dilapidated and in serious need of reconstruction. They closed the sale last July, well after prices for similar properties had more than doubled.
Under the most permissive license in state medical marijuana regulations signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2015, FLRish Inc. plans to grow four acres – 174,240-square feet – of marijuana to be marketed under Harborside Farms, named after the dispensaries DeAngelo operates. http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/california-weed/article140700623.html
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3-24-17 It is possible that the Moicas have followed the blueprint of earlier Mexican drug trafficking organizations, such as the Xalisco Boys who achieved a striking expansion across the United States in the 1990s by investing in the heroin market while maintaining a low profile.
And it is likely that the Moicas' rise and reported expansion has been fueled by the booming US demand for heroin. The US consumption market for this particularly addictive drug is believed to have tripled over the past decade, boosted by over-prescription of legal opioid drugs and even allegedly criminal activity by executives of some companies in the US pharmaceutical industry. http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/las-moicas-mexican-cartel-heroin-california
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4-8-17 Even as California embraces the booming legal marijuana market, though, it is also seeing an explosion in illegal cultivation, much of it on the state’s vast and remote stretches of public land. National forests and even national parks have seen a surge in large-scale illegal “trespass grows,” some with tens of thousands of plants spread across dozens of acres. As much as 80 percent of illegal pot eradicated in California is grown on federal lands, and that’s just the fraction that authorities find. (Trespass grows occur in other states in the American West, and even in remote areas back east, but at nowhere near the scale of California.)
The surge has overwhelmed land-management and law-enforcement agencies, whose resources are already stretched thin. Here in the Plumas National Forest, for instance, three USFS officers have to cover some 4,600 square kilometers (1,790 square miles). That’s why so many different agencies are cooperating on this raid. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cartels-growing-marijuana-illegally-california-194700553.html
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8-12-16 The ABC affiliate reports that a Mexican cartel has made its presence felt in the Plumas National Forest.
“What we encounter is a number of Mexican nationals or people not from the United States running the gardens,” Plumas County Sheriff Detective Chris Hendrickson says. Summer months are particularly perilous and busy for joint task forces that frequently shut down illegal marijuana ventures.
Cartels zealously guard their marijuana cultivation efforts with vicious pit bulls. Cattle rancher Mike Grubs told KXTV that a cartel with operations near his property “had pit bulls running free and they attacked two cows and bit their ears off.”
While Hendrickson noted more bloody instances: “We had instances where hunters were walking in the fields and killed and bodies found later.”
The sheriff detective explained the cartel’s tactics and that some Mexicans involved “are out here for 3 or 4 months and are promised $10,000 or $20,000 to grow.” The narcotics task force that leads operations against this sort of cartel activity at the Plumas National Forest consists of the National Guard, Forest Service Rangers, and County Deputies.
The problems caused by Mexican cartels in the area have been ongoing for years. Back in June of 2015, Forest Service Rangers along with Plumas County authorities got their hands on 7,700 marijuana plants, which according to local Sheriff Greg Hagwood, are likely linked to a Mexican cartel.
California residents will vote to legalize recreational use of the drug in their state, known as Proposition 64, in November. Former Facebook president and billionaire Sean Parker has given $2.5 million towards the effort for legalizing the narcotic. http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/12/mexican-cartel-uses-california-national-park-to-grow-pot-kills-curious-hunters/
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11-2-16 The biggest individual donor, by far, is former Facebook president Parker, who has contributed $8.5 million to the cause through various committees. Parker has declined interview requests, but Kinney said the tech entrepreneur sees the initiative as a social justice issue and California as a key state in which to end criminalization.
“It’s never been about him — it’s about the thousands of lives ruined and the billions of dollars wasted by the failed war on drugs,” Kinney said. Parker has “no current nor future interest in the commercial marijuana industry,” the spokesman added.
Another $4 million has been contributed by a nonprofit called the Fund for Policy Reform to a group called Drug Policy Action in support of Proposition 64.
When asked where the money originated, Drug Policy Action confirmed that it came from Soros, the New York hedge fund billionaire. Representatives declined a request for comment from Soros....
Those donors appear to be investing contributions now in hopes of cashing in on a new industry later, said Andrew Acosta, a spokesman for the campaign against Proposition 64. “Much of the money coming into Prop. 64 is not about social justice,” Acosta said. “It is a business investment for the industry to crack into the California market.” http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-proposition64-cash-snap-20161102-story.html
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