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In Northern California\u2019s Trinity County\u2014inland from Humboldt and more rugged\u2014a recent brutal police raid on cannabis farmers at a local homestead provides an all too vivid example of what the stakes are when the legal sector fails small operators.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On May 2, Trinity sheriff\u2019s deputies executed a search warrant in the Trinity Pines community near the town of Hayfork. The Sheriff\u2019s Office said over 16,000 plants were seized in the operation, along with 7,500 pounds of processed marijuana and various firearms. But at the homestead of grower Nhia Yang, deputies fatally shot the family\u2019s dog\u2014almost immediately upon showing up at the gate and as Yang\u2019s hands were in the air. Video of the shooting\u00a0went viral<\/a>\u00a0online, and the incident won coverage from the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n According to a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0from the Sheriff\u2019s Office, \u201cYang was arrested for illegal marijuana cultivation, possession of marijuana for sale and resisting arrest.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The statement also said \u201cTrinity County Environmental Inspectors removed several containers of illegal pesticides from nearly all of the sites visited\u201d\u2014without making clear if this included Yang\u2019s.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some Trinity county residents are calling for Sheriff Tim Saxon to resign over the incident.\u00a0The bitterest irony is that the cannabis at the property was being grown under state license. Yang, the family patriarch, was the property owner and father of the license holder.\u00a0<\/p>\n The homestead had previously had a county permit, but this wasn\u2019t renewed due to a lawsuit brought by a local citizen\u2019s group that has aggressively taken on cannabis cultivation in the county, the Trinity Action Association (TAA).\u00a0<\/p>\n The County and TAA\u00a0reached a settlement<\/a>\u00a0in the suit in August 2019, under which the validity of local permits was suspended until a site-specific review for each one was conducted in conformity with CEQA. This is despite the fact that the 2017 MAUCRSA\u00a0allowed a window<\/a>\u00a0of until 2021 before CEQA hit in for California growers.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2021, the TAA went back to court, charging that the county violated the settlement agreement by issuing provisional licenses. That September, a state judge in Redding (the nearest city in neighboring Shasta County)\u00a0ruled <\/a>for the TAA, putting all new permits and renewals\u00a0on hold. The county started issuing new licenses with CEQA review starting in the spring of 2022, but by then, there was a backlog some 400 deep that still hasn\u2019t been cleared out.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lisa Wright is chief executive at\u00a0Flowra<\/a>, a firm based in Trinity\u2019s county seat of Weaverville that helps growers with permitting and licensing. She is outraged at the brutal raid at the Yang homestead. \u201cI guess Trinity County has re-criminalized cannabis cultivation for licensed growers,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Wright says structures at the homestead were damaged in the raid and that no interpreter was brought in\u2014despite the fact that Yang, a member of the Hmong ethnic group from Laos, speaks limited English.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen did we leave the USA?\u201d Wright asks rhetorically. \u201cWhen did Trinity County secede? I think we\u2019re still innocent until proven guilty here\u2014yet they destroy someone\u2019s property and bury the evidence and terrorize this man who barely speaks English.\u201d<\/p>\n She also perceives a racist and xenophobic element in the county crackdown, which has seen increasing numbers of raids over the past years. \u201cThere\u2019s a growing immigrant population involved in cannabis cultivation here\u2014East European and Hmong. They\u2019ve been targeted in the raids, roughed up, thrown to the ground, told to go back where they come from.\u201d<\/p>\n She notes with alarm that under a multi-county task force, deputies from Siskiyou County have been\u00a0brought in for the raids<\/a>\u2014including that at the Yang homestead. Siskiyou, bordering Trinity on the north, has a large Hmong community\u2014and has seen protests in usually sleepy county seat Yreka in recent years over charges of\u00a0ethnically targeted enforcement<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Trinity Pines area has a\u00a0large concentration<\/a>\u00a0of Hmong growers and Wright finds it disconcerting that Siskiyou deputies are participating in raids there.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trinity, like Humboldt, enacted a county ordinance allowing commercial cultivation permits way back in 2016 before Proposition 64<\/a> even passed. But now, the pro-cannabis forces appear to be in retreat before a backlash. Since the November 2022 elections, two seats out of the five on the Board of Supervisors are held by TAA-backed candidates\u2014including Jill Cox, chair of the board.<\/p>\n And Wright sees their influence as indicative of a flaw in the state\u2019s cannabis law. \u201cProp 64 gave too much control to local jurisdictions,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ross Gordon of the HCGA is also policy chair of the Origins Council, the statewide advocacy organization for legacy growers. In that capacity, he\u2019s working to promote policy solutions for \u201csmall cannabis farmers using regenerative practices.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n One is a bill currently pending in Sacramento,\u00a0AB 1111<\/a>, that would allow farmers to sell directly to consumers on a green market model. Another is the Small & Homestead Independent Producers (SHIP<\/a>) Act which would allow growers to ship directly to consumers in any state where it\u2019s legal on a wine-club model\u2014contingent on federal legalization.<\/p>\n The OC is working with the newly formed\u00a0National Craft Cannabis Coalition<\/a>\u00a0to prepare for this eventuality.\u00a0\u201cWhatever federal legalization looks like, it has to include provisions for the small farmer,\u201d Gordon says.\u00a0He again points to the \u201ctremendous division between new large-scale cultivators in Central and Southern California, and the Emerald Triangle, where you still have predominantly small farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n There are some 1,500 licensed cannabis farmers in the three counties of the Triangle, Gordon says. Yet just one outfit in Ventura County,\u00a0Glass House Brands<\/a>, has\u00a05.5 million square feet<\/a>, or 126 acres\u2014not even counting a secondary facility in Santa Barbara. \u201cBy contrast, all permitted cannabis in Mendocino County combined is 110 acres, distributed over 475 independent farms,\u201d Gordon notes.\u00a0<\/p>\n The OC\u2019s Coleman sees other ways in which California\u2019s cannabis law is putting small growers at a disadvantage. Under MAUCRSA, the cannabis industry is\u00a0categorized under<\/a>\u00a0\u201cBusiness & Professions\u201d rather than \u201cAgriculture,\u201d with the relevant provisions of the state code applying on that basis. This means that carve-outs in some laws and regulations for agriculture under California\u2019s\u00a0Right-to-Farm Law<\/a>\u00a0don\u2019t apply to cannabis.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFarming can be stinky,\u201d Coleman says. \u201cThe RTF Law limits nuisance complaints for farms. But the \u2018Business & Professions\u2019 classification gets around that. There\u2019s more opportunities for control. We\u2019re still operating under an iteration of prohibition.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Gordon emphasizes that what\u2019s at stake in the Emerald Triangle is survival not only of an economic sector but of what has become a traditional way of life. <\/p>\n \u201cWe still have more small independent cannabis farms than you find in any other region in the US,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a really strong part of our culture.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Miss part one? Read it here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post California\u2019s Persisting Cannabis Dystopia Part 2<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In Northern California\u2019s Trinity County\u2014inland from Humboldt and more rugged\u2014a recent brutal police raid on cannabis farmers at a local homestead provides an all too vivid example of what the stakes are when the legal sector fails small operators.\u00a0 Racist Raids in Trinity County? On May 2, Trinity sheriff\u2019s deputiesContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":66891,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,100,780,687,5153,11184],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66890"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66892,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66890\/revisions\/66892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"California](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Outdoor-cannabis-cultivation.jpg\")
<\/a>Seeking Consensus Solutions\u00a0<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: California\u2019s Persisting Cannabis Dystopia Part 2<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"