Oregon’s Illegal Pot Farms Budding

As the marijuana industry grows, so does the good and bad. Pot was legalized for recreational use in Oregon in 2015, making it legal for any person to grow up to four plants. But in the past year, longtime locals have been alarmed by the rapid proliferation of unlicensed pot farms, unprecedented in terms of size and allegedly controlled by crime syndicates from eastern Europe, China and Mexico.

The national guard have participated in pot raids since 1989. Daniel, who has been sheriff since 2015, is “a big man with close-cropped silver hair.” “The 2021 grow season was the most brazen, in your face, wide open that I’ve seen yet,” he says. He describes farms where crews of migrant workers live under armed guard, without refrigeration or sanitation. “They rule by fear of injury and death. They human-traffic. We know that,” he says of the cartels.

A big part of the problem is rooted in the legalization of industrial hemp, which looks and smells like marijuana but won’t get you high. Since 2010, it’s been legal to grow hemp in unlimited quantities. After the hemp market crashed in 2018, some farmers began hiding psychoactive cannabis plants in their hemp fields and many more leased their properties to out-of-state operators who claimed they planned on growing hemp.

There were some pretty extreme cases. There’s farms where there were young children living in what someone referred to as squalor. They were sleeping under black plastic tarps inside the hoop houses

Although Governor Brown declined to send in the national guard this harvest season, which ended mid-November, Daniel hopes he will have the state’s support next year.

“We’re in close contact with the governor and our federal partners are starting to open their eyes. I’ve talked to the FBI, and the DEA. And everyone is going, ‘Something’s not right in southern Oregon.’”