California’s War Against Marijuana Growers Puts Crimp in Supply on Streets

The four-year war on California marijuana growers, producers of the state’s biggest cash crop at more than $2 billion a year, is being felt on the streets.

The value of the state’s illegal crop was estimated at $2.5 billion in 1984, according to a survey by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. By comparison, cotton, the state’s biggest legal cash crop, brought in less than $1 billion in 1985.

With raids and arrests growing as tons of the illegal weed are being destroyed by law officers, the average cost of a pound of high-potency California sinsemilla rose from $2,000 last year to $3,400 this year, officials say.

A preliminary report of the multiagency Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) indicates that supplies of the weed are going down as the number of plots diminish.

CAMP reported destroying 117,277 sinsemilla plants and 1,426 pounds of processed buds this year. Their combined wholesale value was estimated at $403 million.

Officers arrested 91 people, seized 41 properties and estimated a 27% decline in the number of known cultivated marijuana plants from 1985. The number is down by 73% from 1983, the CAMP program’s first year.

CAMP’s draft report for 1986, which recently was obtained from the state Justice Department, also said that:

- Marijuana growers have scattered to more remote sites and are using improved camouflage and other tactics to avoid being spotted by CAMP helicopter surveillance crews.

- There is little indication that growers have migrated in large numbers from the once marijuana-rich “Emerald Triangle” counties of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity, although there are signs of new cultivation in Southern California.

- Marijuana gardens are sparse, smaller and fewer in number than in past years. For example, the average number of plants per site this year was 170, compared with 398 plants per site in 1984.

- The best deterrent against cultivation of the weed is a 1985 federal law authorizing confiscation of the property of offenders, which this year represents $4 million in equity that can be plowed back into law enforcement programs.

- Enough pot-growing “hot spots” remain, especially in Humboldt and Mendocino counties of the Northern California coast, to warrant continuing the CAMP program, which cost $2.9 million this year.

The war also has been costly in human terms.

CAMP’s first three casualties occurred July 31 in the crash of a small private plane during a search-and-destroy mission near the Oregon border. Killed with the pilot, James Stinnett Jr., were two Siskiyou County sheriff’s deputies, Dale Rossetto and Larry Breceda.

On the ground, increasingly aggressive pot farmers have threatened other lives in an effort to keep their crops out of reach.

“Some of our employees have been confronted while in the field working,” said John Lloyd, who oversees U.S. Bureau of Land Management public lands in the Emerald Triangle. “We have had shots fired close to BLM people. We have had hunters and fishermen threatened.”

Using Booby Traps

Officers also report that growers are continuing to use the booby traps reminiscent of guerrilla war: razor blades nestled in the buds of plants, gravity-activated shotgun shells, fish hooks strung across trails at eye level and boards with two-inch sharpened nails driven through them.

They also are becoming more sophisticated in hiding their work.

“For instance,” Lloyd explained, “a marijuana plantation can be seen easily from the air because the top of the leaves are a shiny, light green color. Marijuana farmers have discovered that by bending the top over and tying it down, the dark underside of the leaves is exposed, and they blend in with other plants and are not easily seen.”

Ev Hayes, a BLM manager in eastern San Bernardino County, said pressure in the north is forcing pot growers “to check out marginal areas such as ours. We have gardens even in our remote areas.”

Climate Too Dry

It is unlikely, however, that pot-growing will thrive in Southern California because the climate is too dry, said Kati Corsaut, a state Justice Department spokeswoman.

Since the marijuana war began, CAMP teams have reported destruction of 506,568 plants weighing 2.5 million pounds with a total estimated wholesale value of $1.2 billion.

Their procedure is to pinpoint marijuana fields by aerial survey during the late summer and fall harvest season, a tactic that has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.