Rogue marijuana grows ruin Stanislaus County neighborhoods. Here’s how to reduce them

The decriminalization of marijuana in California has gone too far.

This isn’t about personal use, which is legal for adults. Nobody cares if you get some weed from a retail cannabis dispensary, or grow a few plants — 10, by law — and indulge now and then.

But illegal grows are out of control in Stanislaus County and elsewhere, ruining neighborhoods with pungent, sickening odors and putting lives at danger.

“The single biggest complaint I get as sheriff is illegal grows,” Stanislaus Sheriff Jeff Dirkse said in an interview.

Not gangs. Not homelessness. Not masks or anything else to do with COVID-19.

People across our county, and beyond, are fed up with illegal marijuana cultivation. It’s past time to do something about it, starting with increased fines and criminal penalties.

The price to pay for getting caught simply isn’t steep enough to deter this activity. Technically it’s criminal activity, but not criminal enough.

A typical bust by law enforcement will result in confiscation of hundreds or thousands of plants, often a few pounds of processed weed, wads of cash and a firearm or two. Wrecked property, ruined soil and other environmental damage can be devastating.

On-site workers, if any, are hauled to jail, booked and released almost immediately because illegal marijuana cultivation is just a misdemeanor regardless of whether they’re growing 11 plants or 11,000. It’s not unusual for a new grow to sprout in the same spot a few weeks later, exposing neighbors to the same odors, unsavory characters and violence all over again.

The risk of violence follows any illegal operation involving big money, and marijuana is big money. An indoor grow in your typical tract house is capable of producing $1 million a year; outdoor gardens stretching several acres, many times that.

Some is distributed on local streets, where it’s worth maybe $1,000 a pound. But the real money is in secretly transporting the marijuana to states where it’s illegal and selling it on the black market there, where it can go for $3,000 or $4,000 a pound.

Marijuana busts now dime a dozen

Last month, authorities raided 64 illegal Stanislaus grows, seizing 74,000 plants and 1,687 pounds of fully processed plants with a street value of nearly $100 million, plus 46 firearms and $172,347 in cash.

The Sheriff’s Department publicizes big busts like that. They don’t bother with the two or three minor ones they conduct each week, because they’ve become too commonplace.

“It would be like, `Look, we wrote some traffic tickets today’ – it’s pretty routine, nothing to get overly excited about,” Dirkse said.

Three months ago, Vito Chiesa – chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors – followed up on a tip, found an illegal grow in Turlock and passed it along to Dirkse’s office. After an investigation, deputies on Thursday eradicated 5,000 plants there, then went to another near Riverbank, pulled up 700 more and also found some crystal meth.

Just this year, Chiesa has personally verified and turned in at least two dozen grows. He doesn’t bother with small ones of 20 or 30 plants, he said.

Guarding that future profit against thieves looking for easy money is a constant worry for illegal marijuana farmers, who sometimes resort to assault firearms associated with mass murder. And yes, things do turn deadly. A July 10 shootout at an illegal grow run by a cartel in Mariposa County put one man in the hospital and the other in the morgue; both were from Modesto.

No peace-loving citizen wants that in their neighborhood. Nobody deserves exposure to that risk of violence.

Human trafficking in Stanislaus grows

Also victimized, at times, are children of those tending illegal grows, and sometimes the growers themselves. Agents have come upon undocumented workers laboring for slave wages; some have no idea where they are, having been brought directly from the border to work off debts to a coyote, or human smuggler.

Several grows busted in Patterson homes were tended by undocumented workers from China whose task-masters are with Asian organized crime in the Bay Area, Dirkse said.

Human trafficking in any form is tragic.

California finds itself in this mess because the state went too far relaxing our approach to marijuana. States likes Washington and Colorado, which also allow medicinal and recreational marijuana use, don’t have such problems with illegal grows because such activity there still is a felony.

The obvious fix is reinstating felony penalties in California, with potential for time behind bars for violations.

State legislators must recognize the deterioration in quality of life for neighbors forced to put up with this criminal activity, and return to treating it as such.

Again, people with a few plants for personal use would not be subject to this. Nor would regulated cannabis farms and dispensaries, which contribute millions of dollars to our local economy and generate very few headaches for law agencies. The only ones who need worry would be greedy bad actors taking advantage of lax California law, to the detriment of all but themselves.

Hit bad guys where it counts

Local leaders also can attack the problem with more ferocity on the civil side, by hitting the bad guys in their wallets.

An ordinance passed in 2019 by the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors, for instance, allows fines of $1,000 per day, per plant, which start accumulating as soon as violators receive notice. The county recently contracted with the state, which soon will provide a hearing officer needed to begin enforcing the ordinance, County Counsel Tom Boze said in an interview Friday.

We look forward to seeing how that works out.

Meanwhile, Boze’s office is trying yet another civil remedy — declaring illegal grows as nuisance properties and using the courts to force owners to clean up their act.

On Wednesday, a judge granted receivership for a property on Harding Road west of Turlock where a 2019 raid revealed 5,000 marijuana plants, followed by discovery of 2,827 more plants in a subsequent bust in 2020. Aside from the illegal grows, someone converted a chicken coop into living space for people, and the place is littered with up to 30 junker cars. It’s a mess.

The receiver will rehab the property, and proceeds from selling it will cover his or her fees plus costs to clean it up.

The county has invested nearly a year preparing legal documents just getting to this stage, Boze said. With more than 1,000 illegal grows still out there, according to Dirkse’s estimate, it’s not reasonable to expect receivership for every one. But at least we’re moving in the right direction.

State leaders could help us move much faster by reinstalling felony penalties for illegal marijuana grows, a recent and regrettable Stanislaus scourge that no neighbor should have to endure.