I worked with a lady who lived in a quiet cul-de-sac. One night she saw a really bright light coming out of a basement window next door to her. A week or so later she's chatting with a neighbor...
I worked with a lady who lived in a quiet cul-de-sac. One night she saw a really bright light coming out of a basement window next door to her. A week or so later she's chatting with a neighbor and mentions the light. The guy is all, 'its a shame that people ruin a perfectly good house with a grow op like that.'
A few months later every house but hers gets raided and that guy is being taken away. He was part of a group running about six or so houses and her house was the only one they didn't have.
Isn’t this odd? Sixty raids since 2022 have led to only two charges? Were there any arrests that didn’t lead to charges? And it keeps happening in the same small city of 112k residents? Maybe I...
Despite the large loads of marijuana and cash taken during roughly 60 raids in Antioch since 2022, only two people associated with the busts in that city have been arrested and charged; both were given misdemeanors, according to records provided by Cannabis Control.
Isn’t this odd? Sixty raids since 2022 have led to only two charges? Were there any arrests that didn’t lead to charges? And it keeps happening in the same small city of 112k residents? Maybe I watch too many movies, but the conspiracy theorist in me wonders how difficult it would be for the police force to setup these raids so they can keep collecting state or federal funding. I know that’s unrealistic given that the FBI is involved and how high risk an operation like that would be, but this particular stat jumped out at me as peculiar.
They want to seize the cash and the weed. It is very well documented that police forces in California are very much involved in selling drugs. When they raid grow operations, they take everything,...
They want to seize the cash and the weed. It is very well documented that police forces in California are very much involved in selling drugs. When they raid grow operations, they take everything, and a lot of it disappears. They don't particularly care about arresting people unless there are harder drugs, and/or a lot of guns. They are often being paid off by black market operations. For example, several biker gangs run open air weed markets for vendors to sell their products (it is very cute like a farmers market). The bikers are paid to keep order and make it safe, the cops are paid to stay away. It's an ecosystem.
I grew weed in Oakland for 5ish years. I have seent things.
I'm just speaking from my own anecdotal experience and what I've learned being in that business. The news reports where cops are actually exposed for their own drug crimes are usually related to...
I'm just speaking from my own anecdotal experience and what I've learned being in that business. The news reports where cops are actually exposed for their own drug crimes are usually related to fentanyl and are a way bigger deal. I've worked at places that have been repeatedly robbed, and the police are like "cool we'll file this report for you" and they 100% do not care. Even in a couple cases where we had some idea who robbed us, AND gunfire was exchanged, nothing ever happened. I've never been raided by the cops, but have worked with growers who have been raided. It always went like this: cops show up, cops confiscate all the product, they also take the cash, and then they leave. They don't arrest anyone, and there is no followup. The people being raided only have legal recourse if they were licensed, and even then, it is unrealistically expensive to fight a legal battle over your confiscated product so most people can't. What they actually do with the confiscated product is anyone's guess. But based on the level of corruption within the bay area police forces..... I am pretty confident in my speculation.
Bay area cops are constantly being investigated by the FBI. It seems like every few months you hear about cops being involved in fentanyl/opiod distribution.
You just see so much bullshit from them, that the average person would not know is bullshit. But I can only imagine it has to be a way for them to money launder??? I don't know. But this article for example
By their conservative estimate, each individual plant here is worth 200 dollars. In real life, a clone sells for anywhere between 2-15 dollars. And 15 is pricey, like 5 dollars is the norm. I worked for an operation that went out of business because 8 dollars was more than farmers were willing to pay for a rooted clone. There are NO illegal cloning operations that sell a clone for 200 dollars. Where are they getting this math? Every time I read an article that's like "we confiscated X$$$ of product" the math is always insane. They also lie through weights. They may say "we confiscated x pounds of product" but then include the weight of the soil and the pot the plant is in. There is no oversight, they police themselves, and because the people they are robbing are technically criminals, no one can do anything. It would be very unwise to report this to any journalist because you would be incriminating yourself. Most people are just relieved they weren't arrested and cut their losses.
Civil forfeiture used to be a hot topic and probably has a lot of related stories of police taking things with no/weak grounds. Some with great names like United States v. $124,700 in U.S....
Not sure if there's been any progress made since then. Definitely recall seeing a number of very unflattering stories about gangs in LAPD or treatment of marijuana industries in California (e.g., a pizza party). Especially when the quasi legal status was more fresh.
Depends on when they do the raids; if there's no one in the house when they raid, and they have no specific proof the owner of the property knew about it, what charges do they bring on whom? On...
Depends on when they do the raids; if there's no one in the house when they raid, and they have no specific proof the owner of the property knew about it, what charges do they bring on whom?
On the other hand, this does make for a good working environment with minimal fuss for everyone; the police like big busts, the growers sell the house for a profit and move on to the next one, and the status quo continues.
Yes it is odd. From the article, apparently nobody is there when they finally get in. I wonder how that happens? One of the houses belonged to a police officer, which suggests they might get...
Yes it is odd. From the article, apparently nobody is there when they finally get in. I wonder how that happens? One of the houses belonged to a police officer, which suggests they might get advance notice from an insider somehow.
So far they are just getting rid of grow houses, which is something, but perhaps there’s an ongoing investigation that hasn’t resulted in arrests yet.
Does someone need to be physically present in an operation like this all of the time? I had my plants set up last winter so that I was able to leave town for almost a week and they were fine. I’m...
Does someone need to be physically present in an operation like this all of the time? I had my plants set up last winter so that I was able to leave town for almost a week and they were fine. I’m not a pro at this, with some kind of automatic watering system (or hydroponics) and some cameras I’ll bet they only need to be there for planting, harvesting, and occasional checkups.
Among California’s marijuana cops at Cannabis Control, Antioch has developed a reputation as a hub for high-yield, covert indoor grow operations. They have raided at least 60 alleged grow houses in the city over the past two years and suspect well over 100 more remain in operation.
…
The Golden State, whose cannabis enjoys a global reputation similar to that of Napa Valley wines, produces about 40% of the nation’s weed – the vast majority of it by unlicensed growers, according to Beau Whitney, an economist who specializes in the cannabis industry. The runner-up state – Oregon – produces less than a fifth of California’s output, he said.
…
In Antioch, the operations bear the hallmarks of “the Chinese criminal syndicate,” said Bill Jones, chief of law enforcement at the California Department of Cannabis Control. He added that criminal networks made up of Chinese nationals have become the dominant presence in the state’s illegal cannabis trade over the past five years, eclipsing Mexican cartels.
…
A review of search warrant affidavits, online property records and interviews with neighbors of some of the raided homes showed that the vast majority were owned or occupied by people with Chinese names, in a city where Asians make up about 15% of the population.
…
[…] in California, the feds in recent years have largely taken a hands-off approach to marijuana, officials say. And under state law, any amount of illegal weed – save a few exceptions, such as the culprit being a registered sex offender or selling it to a child – is a misdemeanor offense.
…
Although the state routinely seizes cash from the raided homes, it does not seize the homes themselves. Of the 60 raided homes in Antioch, about half were fixed up and sold by the original owner – often for a significantly higher amount than the prior sale – after the busts, CNN found.
They wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t profitable. I was wondering how they managed to turn a profit at this, one of the houses looked very nice. I’m guessing housing costs are less there than in...
They wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t profitable.
Illegal operators ignore the rules and fees of California’s highly regulated system under which marijuana can be legally produced and sold. They also skirt taxes and can thus undercut the prices of the legal market, which in California is struggling – in part because of the surplus flowing from the black market.
I was wondering how they managed to turn a profit at this, one of the houses looked very nice. I’m guessing housing costs are less there than in other areas, and it sounds like they’re stealing/siphoning utilities from their neighbors. Between taking up housing and water - a limited resource in California- this must be really hard on those neighborhoods.
Is it hard to turn a profit as a legal grower in California? My understanding is that it’s an issue in places with federal water for irrigation because the Feds won’t let them use it.
When they legalized it, they passed regulations that in my opinion were designed to kill all small businesses that had been operating legally already. There was a legal market in place for...
When they legalized it, they passed regulations that in my opinion were designed to kill all small businesses that had been operating legally already. There was a legal market in place for medicinal use, and almost none of them survived. The cost for licensing is staggering, upwards of 250k per year depending on what you're trying to do. They promised beforehand that there would be a cap on the number of licenses that someone could have, to ensure fair market for everyone. This was a lie. Day 1, they allowed the big investors to stack as many licenses as they wanted. So you had these mega giants appear on the scene with unlimited resources, sometimes possessing 300 licenses at once. (A license dictates how many square feet you can grow on). In the second year of legalization, these companies FLOODED the market with product that was so cheap, it drove the price per pound to zero. People literally could not give it away. Almost all the farms that existed in 2017 are either dead, or were acquired by a mega corp.
My point is, the statement you highlighted is a complete lie. The legal market is not struggling because the black market exists. It's struggling because of the way they set it up. And soon there will only be monopolies here, which I believe was always their intention.
Don't even get me started on how poorly regulated the legal market actually is. I will NEVER consume a product from a dispensary in CA because 100% they are full of illegal pesticides and you are rolling the dice on anything on that label being true. Labs are paid off by companies to boost the thc% and to ignore the pesticides and heavy metals. Cannabis is a bioaccumulator. You got metal in your soil, you got metal in your nugs. I have a couple friends who work in these labs and have told me they've been instructed to give a passing grade to moldy products on multiple occasions.
If these large corporations are flooding the market with cheap and legal pot, why aren’t they selling a lot more than illegal growers? It seems like they would have more market share?
If these large corporations are flooding the market with cheap and legal pot, why aren’t they selling a lot more than illegal growers? It seems like they would have more market share?
They aren't selling to the same market. It's a bit misleading when they talk about the cannabis market, because it is made up of several smaller markets that only overlap in really specific ways....
They aren't selling to the same market. It's a bit misleading when they talk about the cannabis market, because it is made up of several smaller markets that only overlap in really specific ways. Often they are referring to the legal retail market, which the corporations dominate completely. In this market, there is a consumer base who shops at dispensaries, and then there is a black market consumer base who still just get their stuff from their "weed guy" or whatever. The corporations will say that the black market (retail) hurts the legal retail market. But this presupposes that those consumers, in the absence of a black market, would automatically become a part of the dispensary ecosystem. It's up for debate whether that's true, but it's a moot point anyway because it is in all practicality, NOT possible to eliminate unlicensed weed. This is a plant that can self propagate easily, 1 can turn into 20 in a matter of a month. Not to mention if you pollinate it, 1 plant can produce thousands of seeds. You go from seed to harvest in a 4-5 month window. 1 plant can give you anywhere between 4 oz and a few pounds depending on your setup. There is just no way to stop people from growing it, it is crazy to try.
The other part of the market is strictly between farmers and distributors. In the legal market, farmers (unless they are really really big) can not afford a distribution license. The infrastructure required to operate distribution is prohibitively complicated and expensive. The same reason their are distribution companies in the rest of agriculture, it's really expensive to operate vehicles and pay drivers and stay compliant when you are a farmer, and your profit margin is razor thin. However the transfer of product MUST go from grower, to distributor, to retail. That is the only legal transfer of goods. Farmers are not allowed to sell directly to consumers. The big corporations I've been referring to also own distribution licenses. So they are effectively controlling prices for everyone.
Much of the unlicensed product grown in CA is shipped to other states. The corporations are under a few giant companies, but they have been acquiring as many small companies as they can in as many states as they can, so that if/when it is federally legal they will already be poised to operate over state lines. That part of the market isn't even available to them yet, but they'll still claim it's hurting them somehow.
Basically, they already do control almost everything. Their claims that the black market is hurting them are based on a hypothetical future that they are betting will be real soon, and also based on totally made up math that could never possibly be verified (because people breaking federal laws don't report to anyone and don't keep books). They want to create monopolies before the government steps in and tells them they can't and they are extremely successful so far.
When legal permits were given out in 2019/2020 it took about 2 years to get things up and running for all the mass producers and in 2022 there was an absolute glut of legal weed that hit the...
Is it hard to turn a profit as a legal grower in California? My understanding is that it’s an issue in places with federal water for irrigation because the Feds won’t let them use it.
When legal permits were given out in 2019/2020 it took about 2 years to get things up and running for all the mass producers and in 2022 there was an absolute glut of legal weed that hit the market without a huge spike in demand. Dispensaries didn't lower the prices and made an absolute killing while the vast majority of growers/producers went out of business. There has been a big shuffle in the industry since then and consolidation/vertical integration. But yeah, if you just grow and aren't a distributor/grower combo then the margins are razor thin and the industry is volatile.
This drove a lot of the growers to stay or return to the black market. I have some good friends in the industry on the grower side of things and get an earful about it every few months.
Maybe think of it as a real estate investment with an additional source of income? Growing weed does damage, but also pays for the remodeling. They could arrange it so it looks like they're...
Maybe think of it as a real estate investment with an additional source of income? Growing weed does damage, but also pays for the remodeling.
They could arrange it so it looks like they're renting it out, and sometimes that might even be true. Money laundering is built in.
Organized crime can benefit from a division of labor and real estate skills are different than farming skills.
If there's a dispute and real estate owner can't get their co-conspirators to move out, tipping off the police would be a solution.
(This is just speculation based on business logic - I have no idea how it actually works.)
I worked with a lady who lived in a quiet cul-de-sac. One night she saw a really bright light coming out of a basement window next door to her. A week or so later she's chatting with a neighbor and mentions the light. The guy is all, 'its a shame that people ruin a perfectly good house with a grow op like that.'
A few months later every house but hers gets raided and that guy is being taken away. He was part of a group running about six or so houses and her house was the only one they didn't have.
Isn’t this odd? Sixty raids since 2022 have led to only two charges? Were there any arrests that didn’t lead to charges? And it keeps happening in the same small city of 112k residents? Maybe I watch too many movies, but the conspiracy theorist in me wonders how difficult it would be for the police force to setup these raids so they can keep collecting state or federal funding. I know that’s unrealistic given that the FBI is involved and how high risk an operation like that would be, but this particular stat jumped out at me as peculiar.
They want to seize the cash and the weed. It is very well documented that police forces in California are very much involved in selling drugs. When they raid grow operations, they take everything, and a lot of it disappears. They don't particularly care about arresting people unless there are harder drugs, and/or a lot of guns. They are often being paid off by black market operations. For example, several biker gangs run open air weed markets for vendors to sell their products (it is very cute like a farmers market). The bikers are paid to keep order and make it safe, the cops are paid to stay away. It's an ecosystem.
I grew weed in Oakland for 5ish years. I have seent things.
Interesting! Do you know of any news reports about what happens to confiscated drugs and cash, or is all word on the street?
I'm just speaking from my own anecdotal experience and what I've learned being in that business. The news reports where cops are actually exposed for their own drug crimes are usually related to fentanyl and are a way bigger deal. I've worked at places that have been repeatedly robbed, and the police are like "cool we'll file this report for you" and they 100% do not care. Even in a couple cases where we had some idea who robbed us, AND gunfire was exchanged, nothing ever happened. I've never been raided by the cops, but have worked with growers who have been raided. It always went like this: cops show up, cops confiscate all the product, they also take the cash, and then they leave. They don't arrest anyone, and there is no followup. The people being raided only have legal recourse if they were licensed, and even then, it is unrealistically expensive to fight a legal battle over your confiscated product so most people can't. What they actually do with the confiscated product is anyone's guess. But based on the level of corruption within the bay area police forces..... I am pretty confident in my speculation.
Bay area cops are constantly being investigated by the FBI. It seems like every few months you hear about cops being involved in fentanyl/opiod distribution.
https://abc7news.com/post/fbi-investigation-oakland-police-department/15063285/
https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/article/antioch-pittsburg-police-fbi-arrests-charges-list-18302811.php
https://oaklandside.org/2023/06/13/oakland-police-phong-tran-perjury-witness-intimidation-internal-affairs-investigation/
You just see so much bullshit from them, that the average person would not know is bullshit. But I can only imagine it has to be a way for them to money launder??? I don't know. But this article for example
By their conservative estimate, each individual plant here is worth 200 dollars. In real life, a clone sells for anywhere between 2-15 dollars. And 15 is pricey, like 5 dollars is the norm. I worked for an operation that went out of business because 8 dollars was more than farmers were willing to pay for a rooted clone. There are NO illegal cloning operations that sell a clone for 200 dollars. Where are they getting this math? Every time I read an article that's like "we confiscated X$$$ of product" the math is always insane. They also lie through weights. They may say "we confiscated x pounds of product" but then include the weight of the soil and the pot the plant is in. There is no oversight, they police themselves, and because the people they are robbing are technically criminals, no one can do anything. It would be very unwise to report this to any journalist because you would be incriminating yourself. Most people are just relieved they weren't arrested and cut their losses.
Civil forfeiture used to be a hot topic and probably has a lot of related stories of police taking things with no/weak grounds. Some with great names like United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency.
Not sure if there's been any progress made since then. Definitely recall seeing a number of very unflattering stories about gangs in LAPD or treatment of marijuana industries in California (e.g., a pizza party). Especially when the quasi legal status was more fresh.
Depends on when they do the raids; if there's no one in the house when they raid, and they have no specific proof the owner of the property knew about it, what charges do they bring on whom?
On the other hand, this does make for a good working environment with minimal fuss for everyone; the police like big busts, the growers sell the house for a profit and move on to the next one, and the status quo continues.
Yes it is odd. From the article, apparently nobody is there when they finally get in. I wonder how that happens? One of the houses belonged to a police officer, which suggests they might get advance notice from an insider somehow.
So far they are just getting rid of grow houses, which is something, but perhaps there’s an ongoing investigation that hasn’t resulted in arrests yet.
I do think you watch too many movies.
Does someone need to be physically present in an operation like this all of the time? I had my plants set up last winter so that I was able to leave town for almost a week and they were fine. I’m not a pro at this, with some kind of automatic watering system (or hydroponics) and some cameras I’ll bet they only need to be there for planting, harvesting, and occasional checkups.
That's true, although they've done enough raids that I would expect them to catch someone in sometimes just by coincidence?
From the article:
…
…
…
…
…
They wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t profitable.
I was wondering how they managed to turn a profit at this, one of the houses looked very nice. I’m guessing housing costs are less there than in other areas, and it sounds like they’re stealing/siphoning utilities from their neighbors. Between taking up housing and water - a limited resource in California- this must be really hard on those neighborhoods.
Is it hard to turn a profit as a legal grower in California? My understanding is that it’s an issue in places with federal water for irrigation because the Feds won’t let them use it.
When they legalized it, they passed regulations that in my opinion were designed to kill all small businesses that had been operating legally already. There was a legal market in place for medicinal use, and almost none of them survived. The cost for licensing is staggering, upwards of 250k per year depending on what you're trying to do. They promised beforehand that there would be a cap on the number of licenses that someone could have, to ensure fair market for everyone. This was a lie. Day 1, they allowed the big investors to stack as many licenses as they wanted. So you had these mega giants appear on the scene with unlimited resources, sometimes possessing 300 licenses at once. (A license dictates how many square feet you can grow on). In the second year of legalization, these companies FLOODED the market with product that was so cheap, it drove the price per pound to zero. People literally could not give it away. Almost all the farms that existed in 2017 are either dead, or were acquired by a mega corp.
My point is, the statement you highlighted is a complete lie. The legal market is not struggling because the black market exists. It's struggling because of the way they set it up. And soon there will only be monopolies here, which I believe was always their intention.
Don't even get me started on how poorly regulated the legal market actually is. I will NEVER consume a product from a dispensary in CA because 100% they are full of illegal pesticides and you are rolling the dice on anything on that label being true. Labs are paid off by companies to boost the thc% and to ignore the pesticides and heavy metals. Cannabis is a bioaccumulator. You got metal in your soil, you got metal in your nugs. I have a couple friends who work in these labs and have told me they've been instructed to give a passing grade to moldy products on multiple occasions.
If these large corporations are flooding the market with cheap and legal pot, why aren’t they selling a lot more than illegal growers? It seems like they would have more market share?
They aren't selling to the same market. It's a bit misleading when they talk about the cannabis market, because it is made up of several smaller markets that only overlap in really specific ways. Often they are referring to the legal retail market, which the corporations dominate completely. In this market, there is a consumer base who shops at dispensaries, and then there is a black market consumer base who still just get their stuff from their "weed guy" or whatever. The corporations will say that the black market (retail) hurts the legal retail market. But this presupposes that those consumers, in the absence of a black market, would automatically become a part of the dispensary ecosystem. It's up for debate whether that's true, but it's a moot point anyway because it is in all practicality, NOT possible to eliminate unlicensed weed. This is a plant that can self propagate easily, 1 can turn into 20 in a matter of a month. Not to mention if you pollinate it, 1 plant can produce thousands of seeds. You go from seed to harvest in a 4-5 month window. 1 plant can give you anywhere between 4 oz and a few pounds depending on your setup. There is just no way to stop people from growing it, it is crazy to try.
The other part of the market is strictly between farmers and distributors. In the legal market, farmers (unless they are really really big) can not afford a distribution license. The infrastructure required to operate distribution is prohibitively complicated and expensive. The same reason their are distribution companies in the rest of agriculture, it's really expensive to operate vehicles and pay drivers and stay compliant when you are a farmer, and your profit margin is razor thin. However the transfer of product MUST go from grower, to distributor, to retail. That is the only legal transfer of goods. Farmers are not allowed to sell directly to consumers. The big corporations I've been referring to also own distribution licenses. So they are effectively controlling prices for everyone.
Much of the unlicensed product grown in CA is shipped to other states. The corporations are under a few giant companies, but they have been acquiring as many small companies as they can in as many states as they can, so that if/when it is federally legal they will already be poised to operate over state lines. That part of the market isn't even available to them yet, but they'll still claim it's hurting them somehow.
Basically, they already do control almost everything. Their claims that the black market is hurting them are based on a hypothetical future that they are betting will be real soon, and also based on totally made up math that could never possibly be verified (because people breaking federal laws don't report to anyone and don't keep books). They want to create monopolies before the government steps in and tells them they can't and they are extremely successful so far.
When legal permits were given out in 2019/2020 it took about 2 years to get things up and running for all the mass producers and in 2022 there was an absolute glut of legal weed that hit the market without a huge spike in demand. Dispensaries didn't lower the prices and made an absolute killing while the vast majority of growers/producers went out of business. There has been a big shuffle in the industry since then and consolidation/vertical integration. But yeah, if you just grow and aren't a distributor/grower combo then the margins are razor thin and the industry is volatile.
This drove a lot of the growers to stay or return to the black market. I have some good friends in the industry on the grower side of things and get an earful about it every few months.
Maybe think of it as a real estate investment with an additional source of income? Growing weed does damage, but also pays for the remodeling.
They could arrange it so it looks like they're renting it out, and sometimes that might even be true. Money laundering is built in.
Organized crime can benefit from a division of labor and real estate skills are different than farming skills.
If there's a dispute and real estate owner can't get their co-conspirators to move out, tipping off the police would be a solution.
(This is just speculation based on business logic - I have no idea how it actually works.)