Pot Raids Come Early to California
June 29th, 2009 by Rick
The feds are ramping up their efforts to bust illegal grow sites within California by way of a state sanctioned marijuana eradication team, comprised of federal, state and local officers — known as the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP).
A state Department of Justice spokeswoman, Special Agent Michelle Gregory, said:
They’re planting earlier, we might as well get out there and start picking them. [...] Hopefully, we can get some more grow sites.
CAMP is looking to break their record from last year of 2.9 million plants (reportedly worth $11.6B) seized from across California. Meanwhile, at a federal level, 5.2 million plants had been confiscated within the state. According to local authorities, 44,000 outdoor marijuana plants have already been uprooted, a figure way up (three times) from last year — Lake County being the number one area for the grow sites, for the third year in a row.
The grow sites that are raided (especially the large public ones) are believed to be operated by Mexican nationals that think growing pot and then distributing it within the United States is safer than growing it in Mexico and trying to smuggle it across the border. Apparently greed is behind the sheer increase of crops.
