Free Republic

Chinese gangs have set up thousands of illicit weed farms across the US as they begin to challenge Mexican cartels for supremacy as America's cannabis kingpins. Authorities in Oklahoma, Oregon, California, New Mexico and Maine have all been battling a surge in Chinese weed farms, with some thought to be linked to criminal gangs known as 'triads'. The spread is seemingly uncontainable, with police in Penobscot County, Maine, last week arresting three Chinese nationals at a weed farm and seizing 40 pounds of the drug alongside $4,700 in cash. It is thought to be one of around 270 illegal weed...

An infectious pathogen inside California’s pot farms is attacking cannabis plants and growing invisibly for months only to spoil a crop just as a farmer is ready to harvest. Scientists believe that it’s in nearly every pot farm in the state and could be causing billions of dollars in damages to the national weed economy. Hop-latent viroid, or HLVd, shrivels pot plants and reduce how much weight they produce by as much as 30%. It also destroys the amount of THC, pot’s most common active compound, that a plant produces, greatly reducing the value of affected plants. Advertisement HLVd was...

An infectious pathogen inside California’s pot farms is attacking cannabis plants and growing invisibly for months only to spoil a crop just as a farmer is ready to harvest. Scientists believe that it’s in nearly every pot farm in the state and could be causing billions of dollars in damages to the national weed economy. Hop-latent viroid, or HLVd, shrivels pot plants and reduce how much weight they produce by as much as 30%. It also destroys the amount of THC, pot’s most common active compound, that a plant produces, greatly reducing the value of affected plants. HLVd was first...

Scientists with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife are warning that streams harboring endangered salmon and steelhead could go dry because of the heavy water consumption by marijuana growers. During the growing season, California “pot farms” consume 60 million gallons of water a day. That equals 50% more than is consumed by the entire city of San Francisco. ... Two men were arrested were arrested last week at a Santa Cruz County pot farm that state authorities said used diverted stream water and threatened steelhead trout and endangered Central Coast Coho salmon. The raid netted 180 mature marijuana plants...

His 'RIGHTS' were violated!?? This story has been around for 3 years, but not one news report reveals the perp is an illegal alien. From local courts, all the way to the Supreme Court, taxpayers are saddled with the costs of his illegal incursion and defense. Below the article are court documents which finally reveal his status. As he awaits tax payer funded trials, he is NOT in the Jackson County Jail while thousands of alien Mexican drug cartel criminals continue to occupy US public and private lands. Medford man in pot investigation pursues tracking device complaint to Supreme Court...

U.S. law enforcement officers increasingly are facing armed responses by the Mexican drug cartels during raids on their pot grows, and in recent weeks police have killed five suspects in northern California garden shootouts as reported by Glenda Anderson for The Press Democrat. Meanwhile, the drug cartels increasingly have been expanding their business model to include additional rackets to become full Mafia-style criminal organizations, and yesterday an 18-year-old girl was abducted off the street in San Juan, CA and then dumped in a field across the border in Reynosa, Mexico in a failed kidnap-for-ransom scheme as reported by Jared Taylor...

SEQUOIA NATIONAL FOREST (CBS 5 / AP) ― Not far from Yosemite's waterfalls and in the middle of California's redwood forests, Mexican drug gangs are quietly commandeering U.S. public land to grow millions of marijuana plants and using smuggled immigrants to cultivate them. Pot has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and trip wires to safeguard sprawling plots that in some cases contain tens of thousands of plants offering a potential yield of more than 30 tons of pot a year. ... In 2008 alone,...

Yreka, Calif. - Siskiyou County Sheriff Rick Riggins said that approximately 100,000 marijuana plants were discovered at various garden locations in western Siskiyou County last week. Involved in the discoveries were the Sheriff’s Office Marijuana Eradication Team, Siskiyou County Sheriff’s deputies, Jackson County Sheriff’s deputies, the United States Forest Service, the Department of Fish and Game, and the California Highway Patrol Air Division. Riggins noted that a representative from the Fish and Game Department came along to assess the damage to the environment caused by marijuana operations. Riggins said that on Friday, the agencies involved discovered a garden in the...

The nation's drug czar chopped down marijuana plants growing deep inside the Sequoia National Forest in Tulare County on Tuesday. John Walters.... came to California to bring attention to a new locally coordinated, but partly federally funded, marijuana eradication program to raid marijuana gardens planted on public lands by Mexican drug cartels. U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott joined Walters in a helicopter ride to a remote location to remove plants, then both spoke at a news conference in Visalia. Scott said those arrested for growing 1,000 or more marijuana plants on public lands face minimum 10-year terms. Mexican drug cartels are...