CANNABIS CULTURE – Rural areas of northern California and southern Oregon are well known for their high-grade cannabis, comparable to the Champagne wine region of France. That said, its reputation had not only heightened demand, but emboldened criminal activity, putting more workers at risk of exploitation.
“You have cartels involved in this. And when I say cartels, I don’t mean just cartels that are from Mexico or the Hispanic descent side,” says Sheriff Dave Daniel of Josephine County, Oregon a small rural community of 85,000 people. “We have Ukraine, China, Bulgaria, Venezuela. You name it, we got here. And they set up these operations, and they force people to work.”
Daniel says that the cartels overwhelm local law enforcement by leasing properties from residents and setting up operations on a large scale. “We may be able to hit 50 of 600 operations a year.”
Daniel says that the cartels overwhelm local law enforcement by leasing properties from residents and setting up operations on a large scale. “We may be able to hit 50 of 600 operations a year.”
As part of a joint taskforce with the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and many local agencies, Daniel busted a cartel operation spanning two properties, one of which was 1,300 acres and around 200 workers who were fed two times a day working six days a week.
Daniel described the conditions as horrible and inhumane; there was no running water, no refrigeration, victims would sleep either in tents in the tree line in up to 100-degree heat, or on cardboard in hoop houses, which are a steel framed greenhouse with plastic covers. “And when I say tents, people might liken that to camping. It’s not camping. It’s a far cry from camping.”
Despite having representatives of victims’ assistance services on location, the workers refused any help and denied that they were trafficked. Daniel says this is because victims may fear a threat from the cartel killing their family, owing a financial debt to the cartel, or have a fear of deportation.
After being released, the victims left in a in a convoy and disappeared, and this isn’t the first time. Daniel says during another bust that consisted of 200 hoop houses, migrants were equally as uncooperative and were released. “About an hour and a half later, two U-Haul trucks pull up, and all these migrant workers pile into the back and leave.”
“When I say tents, people might liken that to camping. It’s not camping. It’s a far cry from camping,” says Daniel.
To clarify, HSI and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are both part of the Department of Homeland Security, but they are two different branches. Daniel says they haven’t had, nor will have ICE involved because they treat these people as victims of forced labor.
“I tend to see organized crime flourishing where you have circumstances that create an opportunity for them,” says Fred Rocafort, an attorney at Harris Bricken who specializes in cannabis law.
Rocafort says in some state there is a high degree of regulation that results in making it difficult for businesses in some cases to operate legally and allowing criminal organizations to fill in the gaps. “So even if even though the potential is there for legal cannabis operations, the bureaucracy doesn’t move at a fast enough pace.”
A cultivation manager, going by Erin, at a legal Northern California cannabis farm agreed to talk but wanted to stay anonymous for fear that their words may spark an audit.
Erin says on a small farm, the farmers have too much to lose. They invest their life savings, and most, if not all, of what they made in the black-market days to become compliant. However, to keep the lights on, a lot of farmers must turn to off-the-books labor. Erin says all the farmers he knows who bend the rules fairly compensate their off-the-books employees.
One of the biggest labor-intensive jobs at a cannabis growing operation is trimming the plant so that the smokable flowers shelf ready. “The trimming is the last mile of that process. And the entire effort of growing the plants before that point can be wasted by a bad trim job,” says Erin.
According to Erin, the price for trimming with off-the-books workers, was anywhere between $120 to $150 a pound. If a farm doesn’t have a processing license, like Erin’s, they must source out to a processing facility which can cost up to $450 a pound not including labor fees to transport the product out there. To put it in perspective, that 1,300-acre operation that Daniel busted had about 6000 pounds of cannabis.
Another big problem in California is that cannabis is not considered an agricultural product, so a lot of the none of the agricultural laws and special circumstances that apply to conventional agriculture.
“I would like to see more of a focus on the creation of more specialized task forces,” says Rocafort. “You’re going to need people who can speak the languages and come up with solutions. If we can make it easier for companies to hire people, that makes a dent into forced labor.”
“There’s still a lot of forced labor going on in those industries, too,” says Erin. “And I think that it probably comes back to greed. But more so than that, just needing to know the basics on how to run a business.”
Rocafort says modern agriculture in America creates a lot of issues around forced labor, “We don’t have many people in the US many American citizens that are interested in working in agriculture. It’s a demanding job, where the money to be made under the best of circumstances for the regular workers is not that much.”
“I would like to see more of a focus on the creation of more specialized task forces,” says Rocafort. “You’re going to need people who can speak the languages and come up with solutions. If we can make it easier for companies to hire people, that makes a dent into forced labor.”
In Oregon, Daniel has a meeting this month with the US Attorney’s Office, the DEA, the HIS and all the sheriffs in Southern Oregon to find a better way to combat cartel activity. “The bad actors are getting while the getting’s good,” he says. “At some point, I have a feeling the federal government’s going to try and legalize this product. And I think when that takes place, it’ll change the playing field a little bit.”
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