Global Ganja Report

US citizen and Army veteran George Retes on July 16 spoke out after being arrested during an immigration raid at his workplace on a California cannabis farm, stating that he was detained for three days without explanation.

ICE agents raided a cannabis farm in California's Ventura County July 10, sparking a clash with protesters and resulting in the death of an employee. Agents threw smoke canisters and flash-bangs into a crowd that gathered to confront them as the operation was taking place at Glass House Farms near Camarillo. A farmworker who had apparently climbed onto a roof to evade the agents fell during the chaos, and expired after two days on life support with a brain injury. Jaime Alanis, 57, is the first known person to die during one of the Trump administration's ongoing immigration enforcement operations. Similar confrontations were reported in a raid on a second Glass House Farms facility around 35 miles away in Carpinteria. ICE said that they detained 361 "illegal aliens" in the raids on the two sites. (KABC, LAT, NYT, SBI, NNN, USAT, AP)

There is grim news from California, where cannabis industry profits are dropping, robberies of dispensaries are soaring, and police raids on unlicensed growers continue in the Emerald Triangle. Can the seeming slip back into pre-legalization dystopia be arrested?
 

The year 2020's record-breaking wildfires in California and other Western states have compounded the grim impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic—and have similarly been politicized. Thus far, the blow they have dealt to the burgeoning cannabis industry has been well weathered. But this will clearly pose a growing challenge in the years to come—as those parts of the country where legal cannabis cultivation is most advanced are also the most vulnerable to this devastating sign of ecological disequilibrium.

Big militarized raids by state police and National Guard forces on illicit grows in Northern California's Trinity County brought back bad memories for locals. Several homes were raided and helicopters brought in for the operation—exactly the kind of thing Californians thought they had seen the end of after legalization.

Federal agents from the DEA and IRS, backed up with Santa Barbara police, served search warrants at a medical marijuana dispensary and a grow house on May 2 and 3. No arrests were made, but search warrants were executed at the Pacific Coast Collective dispensary and, the next morning, at 305 E. Haley St., which was named as a grow house. Agents and detectives also searched the residences of PCC operator Charles Jeff Restivo in Carpinteria, who is already facing local felony charges related to the dispensary; and Steven Kessler in Santa Barbara, who was said to operate the cultivation site.

Nine Santa Barbara area residents were arrested Oct. 13 for alleged involvement in a large-scale cannabis-trafficking organization. The arrests came at the conclusion of a year-long investigation, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department. Search warrants were served at seven locations in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, turning up more than 900 indoor and outdoor cannabis plants, more than 300 pounds of processed cannabis, more than 50 pounds of hashish, and several million dollars in hash oil. Investigators also seized more than $125,000 in cash, a 2010 Porsche and nine motorcycles. Police said primary suspect Erik Bjorklund operated under the guise of growing medical marijuana. "This was just a straight-up drug-trafficking operation—purely to make money," said Drew Sugars of the Sheriff's Department. "Based on the numbers, it's certainly a significant operation." (Santa Maria Times, Oct. 13)