In California’s Cannabis War, Civil Is the New Criminal
A new crackdown has begun in California’s cannabis growing heartland of Humboldt County. For unlicensed farmers, a summer of reckoning has arrived. Now that local and state authorities have provisionally licensed about 1,500 legal cannabis farms statewide, they’re stepping up enforcement actions against farmers growing without a permit.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Civil code enforcement is decimating California’s legacy cannabis growers like criminal prohibition never could.
- Fines of $10,000 per day, per violation—maxing out at $900,000, followed by property liens and forfeiture.
- County officials spot tiny grow structures from space using satellite images, and then send abatement notices to any property without a cultivation license.
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