Posted on 10/05/2026 3:53:57 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
When Oklahoma lawmakers finally gave Sheriff Jim Mullett the go-ahead, he began to rein in Garvin County’s marijuana businesses and shut down the illegal ones.
Mullett said there were 470 grows in the county in 2021. With the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control, the state attorney general’s office and other local, state and federal agencies, Mullett said he and his deputies brought the number of grow sites down to 33.
But what happens to all the stuff left behind — including the land, chemicals and agricultural equipment?
“What’s going on in, around the state of Oklahoma, is that you got these abandoned grows that are just left there to rot, and now you got trash, and it’s all grown up,” Mullett said. “It’s land that’s not being used.”
In 2018, Oklahomans voted into law a medical marijuana industry that had few regulations and possibly fewer safeguards. At the high-water mark in 2021, Oklahoma had more than 9,000 licensed marijuana grow facilities.
When hundreds of licenses were shown to be fraudulent, many operators walked away. Officials believe as many as 6,000 were shut down, sold off or abandoned.
Possibly thousands of those properties are now derelict. Thieves target them for copper and equipment. Chemicals and pesticides often sit deteriorating, at risk of leaking into the soil and groundwater.
Boom, then bust
In 2021, Gov. Kevin Stitt tapped Adria Berry, an attorney, to lead the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority. The state oversight agency put in place a quality assurance lab, a team dedicated to analyzing consumer pot products. It also has field inspectors and handles administrative enforcement of state rules.
Berry said the authority now tests the legally grown pot for potency and harmful chemicals, but it also must regulate the sites at which pot is grown.
When voters passed State Question 788 in 2018, OMMA’s task was to turn out licenses within 60 days, with few safeguards. Soon, a scheme emerged in which out-of-state owners paid residents to falsely claim the required 75% local ownership of a given property.
The Oklahoma narcotics bureau uncovered that hundreds of grow sites and other businesses were operated through such straw ownership schemes. Hundreds of such illicit businesses were closed, making the issue of cleanup more pronounced.
One of the first legislative attempts to address the problem came in 2023, in which a licensed grower would pay a bond for cleanup required should the grow be closed. Sen. Darcy Jech, a Republican from Kingfisher, was one of the authors of the bill.
Jech said he believes there were once 9,400 grows operating in the state, and fewer than 1,800 still exist today. “Do the math,” he said. “That’s a lot of grows that have been abandoned out there, and they’re in various stages of disrepair.”
Brian Surber, a deputy director at the narcotics bureau, told a House committee in October that operators may have abandoned as many as 6,000 grows. No official number has been published.
Surber showed lawmakers photos of the abandoned grows, including illegal pesticides dumped into a hole. Piles of trash, buckets of chemicals and other debris were left to drain into the watershed and into rivers and lakes used for drinking water. He described illegal toilets draining directly into a nearby pond.
All of it requires intensive cleanup, and money.
“Just forfeiting these, when we have an illegal grow on it, has proved to be extremely complicated for us,” Surber said.
Land seized for such activities is difficult to sell, Mullett said, because few want to buy land laden with potential environmental hazards.
According to the OMMA’s website, the new law required license holders to submit proof of a $50,000 bond to be used to clean up a property.
“We have revoked quite a few licenses,” Berry said. “But we have attempted to pull bonds and have as yet been unsuccessful.”
Not one bond has been used to clean up a single site, she said. In many cases, responsibility and authority as to who is supposed to supervise such a cleanup, or through what office the bond money would be dispensed, is unclear.
Outside of the bonds, lawmakers have not dedicated a funding stream for cleanup costs.
Jech said the issue of which agency has jurisdiction over abandoned grows and who will pay for cleanup of polluted sites will be discussed at an Oct. 6 hearing.
Weapons-grade poisons
Authorities say one of the most vexing problems is the presence of hazardous chemicals, including some outlawed in the U.S.
In July, federal prosecutors in Muskogee charged two men working at a legal marijuana grow with smuggling in illegal pesticides from China.
Other states linked marijuana grow sites to illegal pesticides with nerve agents that are deadly if inhaled.
In California, where illegal grows abound in the state’s many national parks and forests, illegal grow operations are blamed for the death of wildlife unfortunate enough to come into contact, according to several reports. These include isoprocarb and fenobucarb — neurotoxins so dangerous, they have no legal use in the U.S.
In July 2025 in northern California’s Siskiyou County, officials declared a state of emergency regarding illegal marijuana grows using these and other illegal pesticides. The proclamation stated the growers used sawdust soaked in the substances, which was then burned, fumigating the grows with “thick, poisonous smoke” comparable to “chemical warfare nerve agents by attacking the central nervous system.”
The Oklahoma narcotics bureau reported that such pesticides also are found regularly in illegal Oklahoma grows.
Additionally, marijuana grows use strong fertilizers and even different hormones on the plants to boost production and the levels of tetrahydracannibinol, or THC.
The compounds can leach into the groundwater or drain into the local watershed through runoff. All can devastate the land surrounding the site, said Mourad Gabriel, an ecologist and the co-director and co-founder of Integral Ecology Research Center in Blue Lake, Calif.
Gabriel said the West Coast state struggles to contain the damage caused by as many as 4,500 illegal grows in its parks and forests.
“That is not even mentioning the numbers of private abandoned sites or state land sites,” he said. “Those are just federal trespass cultivation sites.”
The compounds also threaten agriculture. The runoff goes into water used for cattle and farm irrigation. They’re often present in marijuana products that users with legal prescriptions consume for their health.
Gabriel said smoking cannabis with traces of these compounds on it acts just as it would if the pesticide were being burned to fumigate a growhouse. The burning activates the compounds in the mouth and lungs of the consumer.
In May, OMMA issued a recall for more than 200 different marijuana products after tests revealed pesticides in the products.
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Who EVER would've thought this could happen in states that legalized this folly? ;)
“Gabriel said smoking cannabis with traces of these compounds on it acts just as it would if the pesticide were being burned to fumigate a growhouse. The burning activates the compounds in the mouth and lungs of the consumer.”
Kind of surprised that Mother Government wasn’t on the Bandwagon when all of the ‘medicinal marijuana’ demand started years ago.
I’m NOT against that. But, it should be regulated like every other drug we need for high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer drugs, etc.
This really went off the rails. And FAST!
I find it very ironic that the most liberal progressives push the hardest for draconian “environmental” regulations that make it hard for legitimate businesses to survive and prosper. But the same liberal progressives are happy with growing dope and polluting the hell out of the land, air and water. The pollution from the dope growers is orders of magnitude worse than any commercial business operation.
Oklahoma collected over 47 million dollars last in year revenue from marijuana.
If that isn’t enough to clean up the land, then raise taxes even more on the dope, and the dopes who buy the dope.
The Socialist Leftists have absolutely NO sense of irony.
Chain gangs....
Wow. What a cash cow...though all of Oklahoma’s REAL cows are dying from polluted waterways. :(
In Washington State the government taxes tobacco products to death because smoking it causes cancer. But marijuana smoke also causes cancer and the tax on it is minuscule. Why??!!
I always felt that the druggies and Hippies of the 1960s and 1970s, if they came to power would legalize drugs. Well it has happened with all the problems caused by it.
I have never taken illegal drugs.
“What’s going on in, around the state of Oklahoma, is that you got these abandoned grows that are just left there to rot, and now you got trash, and it’s all grown up,” Mullett said. “It’s land that’s not being used.”
********************
Somebody owns the land and Oklahoma isn’t a state with a high amount of land owned by the Federal or State governments.
A list of all the property owners should be listed by the Oklahoma politicians, authorities, & media, so we can get a better understanding of who is responsible for these alleged environmental problems.
I believe Oklahoma had more than a few Chinese growing operations. I don’t know how many are in our county, but yesterday, we passed by one that was abandoned and for sale.
The only reasonable solution is to tax the surviving dope growers to pay for the cleanup, and do not allow them to pass along the cost to the consumer. After all, isn’t that how liberals believe that business works?
Excellent plan!
Add to the mess, a heavy collection of gutless politicians, and dysfunctional government. That’s accompanied by a court system that takes far too long to adjudicate punishment. The whole process began and continues and an environment of corruption and ignorance. That is Oklahoma.
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Yes - our adversaries are utilizing this two-fold: revenue to fund their operations and to also destabilize the society (and ultimately the intelligence of the population and the economy) of their greatest rival.
From another thread:
The marijuana used in the 1960s typically had very low levels of the active compound THC, usually around 1–3%. In contrast, most modern retail cannabis strains regularly test at 20–30% THC—and sometimes even higher.
The main reason for this huge increase:
Selective breeding: Growers have continually chosen plants with higher THC content to develop more potent strains over decades. This was mostly driven by market demand for stronger effects.
Improved cultivation techniques: The shift from outdoor fields to controlled indoor growing allowed precise manipulation of light, temperature, and nutrients, further boosting THC.
Genetic engineering and hybridization: Modern cannabis is bred to maximize THC, often at the expense of CBD and other natural moderating compounds.
Commercial forces: With legalization and the rise of dispensaries, producers compete to offer the most potent product, making high THC a selling point.
So today’s marijuana is far stronger than it was in the past primarily because of deliberate selection, agricultural science, and consumer demand for potency.
17 posted on 11/17/2025, 12:33:49 AM by SeekAndFind
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They can barely keep track of texts and clickbait items on their phones during class lectures.
18 posted on 11/17/2025, 12:34:35 AM by frank ballenger (There’s a battle outside and it’s raging. It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. )
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Key line to me:
This was mostly driven by market demand for stronger effects.
I should have guessed.
19 posted on 11/17/2025, 12:36:49 AM by frank ballenger (There’s a battle outside and it’s raging. It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. )
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Impossible! We’ve been told it isn’t a “gateway drug” - why would they demand “stronger effects” once they’re addicted and desensitized? < / s >
23 posted on 11/17/2025, 12:43:27 AM by Republican Wildcat
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I live 40 miles north of Houston. Seeing a Oklahoma license plate was rare until OK legalized marijuana. Now I see a lot of them. My guess is that these are people running marijuana from OK to Houston and south of there.
I remember all the older drug threads on FR where I was labeled a “drug warrior” for opposing pot... I don’t recall seeing any of them on this thread for some reason.
Thanks for the ‘on the ground’ report! :)
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