--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram here with Paige St. John.
--:-- Paige St. John: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, we're talking about the broken promise of California's pot legalization. Paige is an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times, where she's been covering marijuana in California for a year.
--:-- Paige St. John: That's right. And what I've discovered is that the illegal market has used legalization as a springboard to come out of hiding and set up large operations.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's take a step back and talk about the history of marijuana in California. It's been decades in the making. Can you walk us through it?
--:-- Paige St. John: Sure. California's history with cannabis goes back decades. This is where the strains were developed that have become popular. This is where we had the California mystique of cannabis. Humboldt, Trinity, and Mendocino counties formed the Emerald Triangle and really provided high-quality cannabis to the rest of the nation and much of the world through these very small back-to-the-land movement grows.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then California struggled with whether to legalize it or not. There were raids and militaristic helicopters and the notorious camp raids of the 70s and 80s.
--:-- Paige St. John: That's right. The government declared war on marijuana growers who used the national forests to cultivate their plants. But the rest of the state said, hey, this isn't a bad drug. This is relatively harmless. These people are just owner-growers and peaceful people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: California was the first in the nation to legalize medical marijuana and open its doors to medical dispensaries. But that created a problem.
--:-- Paige St. John: Yeah. It became so easy to get a recommendation for cannabis that we actually then had sham recommendations and sham dispensaries and the medical marijuana market without state regulation and it became a cover for illegal cannabis. That continued to flow across the borders into other states. That's never been legal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then in 2016, Prop 64 came along. By voting yes on Prop 64, adults 21 and over could only purchase marijuana at licensed marijuana businesses.
--:-- Paige St. John: That was the promise of legalization, to create a regulated market, a taxed market, with huge tax windfalls from the sale of illegal cannabis to any community that would allow it open its doors.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But that's not what happened.
--:-- Paige St. John: No. Prop 64 generates a billion in new tax revenue for California to fund after-school programs and job training and placement initiatives. But the opposite of what was promised happened. The illegal market is making it almost impossible for small legal growers to survive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you've been investigating this for a year. What have you found?
--:-- Paige St. John: I've found that the illegal market has used legalization as a springboard to come out of hiding and set up large operations. We're talking 100 greenhouses on a single operation, kind of size. California's experience feels relevant in light of the big marijuana news from President Biden a few weeks ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And considering five more states, Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, and both of the Dakotas are weighing whether to legalize recreational marijuana in the midterm elections next month.
--:-- Paige St. John: California legalized years ago, but the illegal market is still thriving. And you would never know that if you just went to your local pot shop to buy some herb. You'd have to go straight to the source, and that's what I did.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I used satellite mapping to try to get my hands on how much of this was going on around the state. Did samples of 3,000 square miles in just six counties, found enough illegal cannabis there to provide for the entire legal market, and barely scraped the surface as to what's going on.
--:-- Paige St. John: Since legalizations come in, we see many of the folks who want to comply getting on board with the legal framework and going through the proper licensing. There's a whole bunch of folks who are not. And come along with it, crime, violence, guns, shootings, murders.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Deputies responded to the assault with a deadly weapon call on Highway 371. Inside, they found carnage and more than 1,000 pounds of marijuana. It's a runaway illegal market.
--:-- Paige St. John: And we can see why that happened in hindsight pretty clearly. But the belief that California had subscribed to, that Governor Newsom and his administration had bought into, is that the legal market would squeeze out illegal growers that would outcompete.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the opposite is true.
--:-- Paige St. John: The illegal market is making it almost impossible for small legal growers to survive. Let's take a little bit of a step back for all those listeners who aren't in California and aren't familiar with the history.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When did this journey to decriminalize or legalize marijuana begin?
--:-- Paige St. John: California's history with cannabis goes back decades. This is where the strains were developed that have become popular. This is where we had the California mystique of cannabis. Humboldt, Trinity, and Mendocino counties formed the Emerald Triangle and really provided high-quality cannabis to the rest of the nation and much of the world through these very small back-to-the-land movement grows.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then California struggled with whether to legalize it or not. There were raids and militaristic helicopters and the notorious camp raids of the 70s and 80s.
--:-- Paige St. John: That's right. The government declared war on marijuana growers who used the national forests to cultivate their plants. But the rest of the state said, hey, this isn't a bad drug. This is relatively harmless. These people are just owner-growers and peaceful people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: California was the first in the nation to legalize medical marijuana and open its doors to medical dispensaries.
--:-- Paige St. John: Yeah. It became so easy to get a recommendation for cannabis that we actually then had sham recommendations and sham dispensaries and the medical marijuana market without state regulation and it became a cover for illegal cannabis. That continued to flow across the borders into other states. That's never been legal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then in 2016, Prop 64 came along. By voting yes on Prop 64, adults 21 and over could only purchase marijuana at licensed marijuana businesses.
--:-- Paige St. John: That was the promise of legalization, to create a regulated market, a taxed market, with huge tax windfalls from the sale of illegal cannabis to any community that would allow it open its doors.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But that's not what happened.
--:-- Paige St. John: No. Prop 64 generates a billion in new tax revenue for California to fund after-school programs and job training and placement initiatives. But the opposite of what was promised happened. The illegal market is making it almost impossible for small legal growers to survive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you've been investigating this for a year. What have you found?
--:-- Paige St. John: I've found that the illegal market has used legalization as a springboard to come out of hiding and set up large operations. We're talking 100 greenhouses on a single operation, kind of size. California's experience feels relevant in light of the big marijuana news from President Biden a few weeks ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And considering five more states, Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, and both of the Dakotas are weighing whether to legalize recreational marijuana in the midterm elections next month.
--:-- Paige St. John: California legalized years ago, but the illegal market is still thriving. And you would never know that if you just went to your local pot shop to buy some herb. You'd have to go straight to the source, and that's what I did.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I used satellite mapping to try to get my hands on how much of this was going on around the state. Did samples of 3,000 square miles in just six counties, found enough illegal cannabis there to provide for the entire legal market, and barely scraped the surface as to what's going on.
--:-- Paige St. John: Since legalizations come in, we see many of the folks who want to comply getting on board with the legal framework and going through the proper licensing. There's a whole bunch of folks who are not. And come along with it, crime, violence, guns, shootings, murders.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Deputies responded to the assault with a deadly weapon call on Highway 371. Inside, they found carnage and more than 1,000 pounds of marijuana. It's a runaway illegal market.
--:-- Paige St. John: And we can see why that happened in hindsight pretty clearly. But the belief that California had subscribed to, that Governor Newsom and his administration had bought into, is that the legal market would squeeze out illegal growers that would outcompete.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the opposite is true.
--:-- Paige St. John: The illegal market is making it almost impossible for small legal growers to survive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's talk about the rest of the country. I mean, the reason we're interested in this story, of course, is because the nation is trending towards legalization and decriminalization.
--:-- Paige St. John: I believe something like 20 states have legalized recreational use at this point. Another 18 or so have legalized medical marijuana or just decriminalized.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And have these states seen similar problems to California?
--:-- Paige St. John: Actually, Oklahoma is overrun with a land rush for people who are taking out the licenses to grow cannabis. Very easy to get, very cheap, and then moving that product, smuggling it out of the state.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In fact, there's a thought that Oklahoma may replace California as the source for illegal weed, you know, for the nation, the rest of the world, because of its central location, just interstate shipping in general.
--:-- Paige St. John: Oregon, it's a mess. They had a special session of the legislature, even moratorium on new licenses. There are many counties there that have declared local states of emergency because of the illegal cannabis.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What the legal states are doing behind the scenes is talking to one another about how to get interstate shipping because a patchwork of legal states is a scenario where each state is requiring that it grow its own and supply its own and that's not the way cannabis works that's not the way any product works with the national market.
--:-- Paige St. John: So they're trying to create some kind of federal framework also banking so that you don't have to deal with cash so that you're not attracting street gangs to do armed heists and rob growers and hold people hostage and kidnapped.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there are things that are expected to help stabilize and create a national market. And even some of the large, large licensed growers are starting to speculate on that national market.
--:-- Paige St. John: They're building capacity, huge greenhouses that are currently growing lettuce, but they're ready at the snap of a finger to put cannabis in those. Because it's a low-risk drug and a great way for them to make a lot of money.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you know of any of these states who have legalized or decriminalized successfully or are all of these operations so interconnected that there's no real way to do it without buying into all these problems we've been talking about?
--:-- Paige St. John: I've heard good things about Colorado, but only about its legal, the legal side of its market. Number one, it's a small state, and it's not a state where it's really hospitable to growing a lot of weed. So you can kind of control the situation on the legal market, but that doesn't speak at all to how much black market weed is being trafficked through or into or out of Colorado.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is all of this an argument for or against federal legalization?
--:-- Paige St. John: I think it's a really good question because it takes political will, not just to say yes to cannabis. And that's probably easy, especially with the campaign donations that come in to lawmakers and both political parties to get behind cannabis because there's a huge investment community that wants a seat at the table.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The hedge funds and the financial industries want to play the game.
--:-- Paige St. John: But the challenging question is then how do you deal with the illegal players? If the DEA and the FBI and the U.S. DOJ have little support for cannabis investigations, if they think it's a low-priority drug, and if they can't follow the money trail across international lines, then you're starting out handcuffed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you'll just have another California situation on a much larger scale.
--:-- Paige St. John: A lot of people will read your LA Times investigation, listen to this show and go, I knew it. You know, all of this effort to legalize marijuana. It's a bad idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But do you think that's the takeaway here?
--:-- Paige St. John: Oh, absolutely not. Because it's not about the plant. It's not about the drug or the use of it or the people who use it as a plant. And as a drug, it's a relatively benevolent, minor substance. And has purported a lot of medicinal uses and therapeutic uses.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's all the stuff that comes with cannabis. The violence and the crime and the environmental destruction, the labor exploitation. That mayhem is what needs to be addressed.
--:-- Paige St. John: Let us burn one from end to end And pass it over to me, my friend Burn it long, but burn it slow To light me up before I go
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Paige St. John, you can read and support her work over at thelatimes.com The article that inspired today's episode is titled The Reality of Legal Weed in California huge illegal grows, violence, worker exploitation, and deaths.
--:-- Paige St. John: Our show today was made by Victoria Dominguez, who was Vox's audio fellow for a good while. She spent a number of months at Today Explained, but her fellowship is coming to an end. She's already off to do great things, and we can't wait to see her journey unfold.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Congratulations, Tori.
--:-- Paige St. John: My choice is what I choose to do And if I'm causing no harm, it shouldn't bother you Your choice is who you choose to be And if you're causing no harm Then you're alright with me If you don't like my fire Then don't come around Cause I'm gonna burn one down Yes, I'm gonna burn one down Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks for listening to today's episode of Today Explained.
