Mexican Crime Families Run Most of State’s Pot Farms
By Mike Geniella
August 28th, 2006
Illegal marijuana production is surging on the North Coast and across the state as a result of rising dominance of Mexican crime families over the state’s underground pot economy.
Scores of Mexican nationals are being sneaked across the border to grow, guard and harvest marijuana gardens inside California because tightened border security has crimped smuggling of Mexican-grown pot into the state, according to local, state and federal drug agents.
Mexican-controlled operations now account for as much as 70 percent of all the marijuana cultivated in the state’s rural regions, including the North Coast, the agents said.
Although multiagency teams are only in the early weeks of their annual marijuana crackdown statewide, the estimated street value of nearly 1 million pot plants uprooted this summer already equals last year’s record $4.5billion. The number of seized plants in Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma counties and the Mendocino National Forest account for about 62 percent of the statewide total.
“There’s more marijuana than ever growing out there,” said Sgt. Rusty Noe, veteran director of Mendocino County’s local anti-marijuana growing efforts. (….Full Article)
