California Launches Largest Illegal Pot Eradication Push in the Country
The Eradication and Prevention of Illicit Cannabis (EPIC) task force will seek to prosecute the labor crimes, environmental crimes and black market economy that illegal pot farming supports.
Landwebs
California workers destroy illegal pot grows. Photo courtesy California NORML
California is expanding its multi-agency seasonal marijuana eradication program into a year-round effort aimed at investigating who is behind illegal pot farms that undercut the legal economy and cause massive statewide environmental damage, reports Don Thompson for the Associated Press.
The annual Campaign Against Marijuana Planting is the largest effort of its kind in the U.S., confiscating nearly a million marijuana plants in 2022 alone, and will now become a permanent Eradication and Prevention of Illicit Cannabis (EPIC) task force.
The task force will seek to prosecute the underlying labor crimes, environmental crimes and black market economy the farming supports. The seasonal eradication program, which lasts about 90 days each summer, still will continue with the cooperation of other federal, state and local agencies.
About 80 percent of the 44 illegal grow sites found on and around Bureau of Land Management properties in the state this year were connected to drug trafficking organizations. This year’s eradication program seized more than 100 tons of processed marijuana, 184 weapons and about 33 tons of materials used to cultivate the plants.
