Dying for your high: The untold exploitation and misery in America’s weed industry

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For millions of consumers, the legalization of weed has brought a multibillion-dollar industry out of the shadows and into brightly lit neighborhood dispensaries. But California has largely ignored the immigrant workers who grow, harvest & trim the weed.

, a private cannabis farm inspection company, said farmers in the broader agricultural community know that if they don’t provide workers with proper housing, restrooms and access to food and water, state regulators “will come down on you very hard.”“The state agencies have completely turned a blind eye to the cannabis industry,” he said.

“Just been really horrible trying to pay so many people. Trying not to go out of business,” Womack wrote in March to a worker. “I am so ... broke right now.” A 32-year-old Portuguese worker who asked to be identified only by his first name, Cristiano, was convinced that if he left the Covelo area, he would never see the money he said Womack owed him. The farm’s payroll sheet said he was owed at least $4,300.He spent the winter in the valley, living in a 1999 Ford Econoline van with a tiny wire-haired dog named Calif.

He had come to the United States, drawn by talk of quick cash on cannabis farms. He intended to stay three months, but it had been two years. The farm’s county-approved operations plan declared only two workers would live on site, negating the need for housing. It never had fewer than six, Jiorle said, and for weeks at a stretch during harvest, more than 50 people would camp on the property. One November, trimmers set up their tents inside an empty greenhouse, and the structure collapsed during a heavy overnight snowfall.

Five years after legalization, the agency had yet to establish a protocol for suspected human trafficking, itself a criminal offense that doesn’t cover the vast majority of exploitative work conditions.In an October email exchange obtained by The Times, a branch manager told division chiefs at the licensing agency that inspectors were finding “circumstantial evidence of human trafficking,” including poor housing, wage complaints and allegations of violent threats.

A sheriff’s deputy, with an interpreter on the phone, questions a handcuffed cannabis worker at an unlicensed San Bernardino County farm. The brothers already had waited a year. Seven more months passed before a hearing was held, and it was an additional four months before an administrative law judge told the workers they had won their case.

The Mendocino County farm had been in operation for five years. During Kali Flower’s early flush years, Del Sordo used the profits to expand, purchase a stake in another farm and buy vehicles, including a $60,000 Mercedes-Benz. But he said the farm couldn’t survive the 2021 collapse in cannabis prices, the damage to crops caused by cold weather and cultivation mistakes.

Such threats are common, said Eduardo, a 41-year-old from Spain who asked to be identified only by his first name to avoid detection by immigration authorities. He said that in five years he has been repeatedly cheated and threatened. In Mad River, workers said they chose to leave a Trinity County farm with half their wages out of fear that if they asked for the rest, their boss would pull a gun on them.Still fighting for wages she said she is owed from managing a licensed Mendocino County farm the prior year, Sabrina takes a break beside her trailer in 100-degree heat before resuming watering duties at an unlicensed operation.

“Thanks, bro, I’m already planning my escape,” he replied with a frowning emoji and praying hands. “There will be something good out there.” Death in the cannabis fields is alarmingly common. Using coroner’s reports, The Times identified 35 fatalities in eight California and southern Oregon counties over a five-year span through 2021.at a farm in Riverside County. The five women and two men, mostly recent immigrants from Laos, were gunned down at peak harvest season in the Anza Valley, a longtime hub for cannabis cultivation. Sheriff’s deputies recovered more than 1,000 pounds of cannabis ready for sale, valued in the millions.

 

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Urgent relief is here before it's too late to save the girl

Illegal immigration promotes indentured servitude

What is the percentage of MarijuanaFarms operated by MexicanCartels ? It is difficult to get fair wages & Safe working conditions in legal businesses ! See DelanoGrapeStrike & UFW. It would be impossible to do that in an off the grid pot farm run by the Cartels !

Were the employees paying their taxes ?

Weed should be illegal, like any other drugs. Government should go after dealers and producers, and invest in our border security to block the flow of drugs.

Stealing water for your high

Now do EVERY OTHER LABOR INDUSTRY. Thanks for listening to my TED talk.

The best selling ice machine is now on sale

Immigrant workers, especially illegal immigrant workers are treated like slaves, but in California the truth is ignored for narrative.

In the country illegally and working in an illegal business. What do you want, a union?

🛑

Not different than other farms sadly

I'm а nudе mоdеl, rаtе mу рhоtоs

Isn't weed legal in CA? Consumprion legal, farming not?

Then don’t work there.

This is the life that our open border politicians sentence these folks too. Well done.

Don’t be here illegally, and don’t do illegal stuff and you’re all good.

Unlicensed farm.

You mean because they are illegal aliens?

Well, no one said that working for the cartels would be easy!

The biggest mistake California and other states made was legalizing cannabis for recreation.

Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?

They should just be deported....

This is some pretty fukks up reporting LA times. There’s a giant leap from cartel supported illegal grow ops and the legal highly regulated industry that is providing employment, a huge tax base increasing property values of entire towns. Propaganda made it illegal to begin with

These are cartels the Times are defending. Sick

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