Northern California's national forest has been dotted with marijuana plantations which are illegally cultivated.
California hosts the state's biggest medical cannabis marketplace having billions of appreciable dollars which are tax-free. This revenue that flows freely goes from growers to distributors and then to cooperatives that run on a "donation" system. Couriers will then consign high-quality pots to customers' residences or offices in just mere minutes.
According to USA Today, the system provides growers and users alike an undisturbed legal protection against state criminal laws which declare that possessing a huge amount of marijuana is a felony. While in some other regions such as Colorado, a large number of growers use the medical marijuana system as a front to grow pot that they can illicitly ship across the state's borders.
Humboldt County is home to legal marijuana growers making cannabis a legal industry under a state law. However, there are growers too that are illegal, transgressing the federal law.
Northern California authorities are inclining more to zone and environmental laws. The truth is, only a handful of cannabis growers fret to adhere to the basic laws conducting electrical wiring, water supplies or construction permits.
The offense is egregious where pot growers steal water, practice deforestation to give way to marijuana plants, set up greenhouses without a permit, and put too much fertilizer on their crops contaminating nearby lakes and streams, according to the authorities.
This year, the Humboldt Country Drug Task Force captured a grower possessing more than 2,000 cannabis plants amounting to $1.5 million. Last year, police made an entrapment worth $26 million, confiscating 23,000 plants, above 2 tons of processed plants, and 50,000 rounds of weaponry.
"Marijuana is the cash crop of Humboldt County. It's what people do there," said Emily Brady, author of the book Humboldt: Life on America's Marijuana Frontier.
Meanwhile, cannabis does not only affect the well-being but also the lives and homes of the people in San Francisco after a devastating fire was linked to a marijuana plantation. The incident happened last year say the officials on Wednesday, while the suspects went out of the country before getting investigated, CBS News reported.
The county is optimistic that Humboldt would gradually switch to a system where amenable growers are permissible welcomed while inconstant growers are pushed out through a coalescence of targeted implementation.
