When California legalized cannabis in 2016, the promises were great: huge tax revenues from legal sales and small farmers in marginalized communities would benefit. Illegal operators would be crippled. Six years later, the reality is that the black market flourishes and tax revenues are just a fraction of the promise. And now, devastating stories of worker exploitation, violence and death. LA Times reporter Paige St. John joined Lisa McRee on “LA Times Today” to talk about exploitation in the cannabis industry.
Cannabis is the second most labor-intensive crop grown in California after strawberries.
“Every aspect of cultivation requires human labor from lugging heavy bags of soil up mountains and water to irrigate plants almost daily, because they don’t have irrigation systems in a lot of these farms or in remote areas off the grid and running on generators. About a third of the cost of the cannabis you buy goes into just trimming the buds and preparing them for resale,” St. John explained.
The conditions that workers endure are “horrendous,” St. John found.
“Conditions that we found in the field and on farms, both licensed and unlicensed, typically require these farmworkers to sleep outdoors, sleep in their cars if they have them, or tents, sometimes in barns, sometimes in trailers, and shipping containers. No sanitation, lack of fresh water, lack of access to food. We found people who, if they couldn’t get the mile an hour and a half drive for food, they were literally starving,” she said.
St. John explained that OSHA does not inspect many cannabis operations since they do not have the manpower to get to the fields. The unpredictable market also has led to wage theft. Accounts of human trafficking and carbon monoxide poisoning also have been tied to cannabis farms.
“We found evidence of large operations, especially in southern Oregon, where labor camps that housed 100 to 200 people had been set up, people living in the woods, showering in the woods, sleeping in tents and on the ground, unable to leave. One worker that I spoke to from one of these camps said that their foremen have guns supposedly to protect the cannabis from theft, but also preventing the workers from moving,” St. John said.
Watch the full interview above.
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