Oregon State Police seized roughly 500,000 pounds of cannabis as part of a sweeping bust last week, the latest illicit grow operation to uncovered by authorities in the southern part of the state.

The state police said that its Drug Enforcement Section for the southwest region of Oregon served a search warrant last Thursday in the community of White City, which is located in Jackson County.

The location targeted by the warrant “consisted of five industrial-sized warehouses zoned for commercial use,” the state police said.

“Over 100 individuals were initially detained, identified, interviewed and released. Several of the individuals were migrant workers living on-site in subpar living conditions without running water,” the organization explained in a Facebook post published over the weekend. 

The operation spanned more than two days, over the course of which “an epic amount of illegal, processed marijuana and a firearm were seized.”

“The DES Team’s conservative estimation on the amount of processed marijuana seized was approximately 500,000 lbs., which depending on where it would be exported to, has a conservative street value of somewhere around $500 million,” the state police said, adding that it remains “a very involved investigation and will be ongoing for several weeks,” and that it will release “more information when available.”

Such raids have become a common occurrence in Jackson County, where local officials last month declared a state of emergency over the illicit cannabis cultivation.

Oregon voters passed a ballot measure in 2014 legalizing recreational cannabis use for adults and establishing the framework for a regulated cannabis market, but unregulated production endures, particularly in the southern part of the state. 

Jackson County law enforcement officials served another search warrant last month that resulted in the destruction of 17,522 cannabis plants and about 3,900 pounds of harvested marijuana. And a separate bust last month in the southern Oregon county of Klamath led to an enormous haul in a 27,000-square-foot potato shed.

The Herald and News newspaper reported at the time that the large potato shed was “filled with marijuana in various stages of processing: drying in giant strands that stretched from the roof to the floor, buds pruned and stuffed into 40-pound bags, hundreds of those bags stacked against a wall and years of discarded marijuana waste in piles ready for disposal.”

The illicit activity has prompted Jackson County officials to call for help. 

In a letter to Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and other legislative leaders, Jackson County’s board of commissioners lobbied for assistance to law enforcement officials and regulators who they said were beleaguered by the amount of illicit marijuana activity.

The commissioners called the unregulated cultivation an “imminent threat to the public health and safety of our citizens from the illegal production of cannabis in our county.”

“Jackson County strongly requests your assistance to address this emergency,” the commissioners wrote in the letter.

One of the commissioners, Rick Dyer, said at a news conference last month that county law enforcement had reported a “59 percent increase in calls for service associated with the marijuana industry, including burglary, theft, assault, robbery and nuisance crimes.” 

The commissioners requested additional funds and even the deployment of National Guard troops to combat the illicit activity. The Oregon State Police said that last week’s 500,000 pound bust in White City “was assisted by the Josephine Marijuana Enforcement Team (JMET) of Josephine County, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Medford Office, the Basin Interagency Narcotics Team (BINET) of Klamath County, the Illegal Marijuana Enforcement Team (IMET) of the Medford Police Department-Jackson County Sheriff’s Office and Jackson County Fire District No. 3.”

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Local leaders of a county in southern Oregon declared a state of emergency on Wednesday, saying that the illegal production of marijuana in the community is a threat to public safety. In a letter to state leaders, the Jackson County Board of Commissioners said that the proliferation of illicit cannabis farms in the area has overwhelmed local law enforcement.

“Jackson County strongly requests your assistance to address this emergency,” the commissioners said in the letter to Gov. Kate Brown, state Senate President Peter Courtney, and Oregon House of Representatives Speaker Tina Kotek.

The commissioners are calling for funding, manpower, and state National Guard troops to help deal with the problem of illegal marijuana cultivation in the county. Members of the board said that law enforcement, local code compliance officers, and state cannabis regulators have been overburdened by the illicit activity and warned of an “imminent threat to the public health and safety of our citizens from the illegal production of cannabis in our county.”

“Since recreational marijuana was legalized by the voters of Oregon in the November 2014 general election, the illegal and unlawful production of marijuana in our county has overwhelmed the ability of our county and state regulators to enforce relevant laws in our community,” Jackson County Commissioner Rick Dyer said in a video press conference on Wednesday.

Law Enforcement Calls for Service Spike with Legalization

Advocates for legalizing recreational marijuana in Oregon campaigned on assertions that cannabis reform would reduce the burden on law enforcement agencies. In Jackson County, however, local police have seen a spike in crime they say is related to illicit cannabis cultivation.

“Law enforcement in Jackson County reports a 59 percent increase in calls for service associated with the marijuana industry, including burglary, theft, assault, robbery, and nuisance crimes,” Dyer said. “And there’s also significant evidence of narco-slavery, forced labor, human trafficking, immigration issues, squalid and unsafe living conditions and exploitation and abuse of workers, child welfare issues and animal abuse.”

This year, the sheriff’s office received a state grant to add two detectives and a property and evidence clerk to the payroll to help combat illegal cannabis farms. But to properly address the issue, Jackson County Sheriff Nathan Sickler said that the community needs an additional 18 detectives, four patrol deputies, three supervisors, and nine support personal, as well as $750,000 per year to cover expenses for services and materials. 

Aaron Lewis, a public information officer for the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, told reporters that “the illegal marijuana problem in Jackson County is rather large.” 

“We have an area that is very conducive to growing outdoor marijuana. So it’s been very difficult to stay on top of some of the scope of some of the operations here in the Valley,” Lewis said. “There’s a lot of investigative work to identify major players in the game, and from there take down these processing facilities and get some of the illegal marijuana off of the street.”

Eradicating an illegal cannabis grow operation involves disassembling greenhouses, uprooting thousands of marijuana plants, confiscating and processing evidence including firearms, as well as detaining or arresting workers on the site. At a raid on an unlicensed cultivation facility on Wednesday morning, officers with the Jackson County Illegal Marijuana Enforcement Team destroyed 17,522 cannabis plants and about 3,900 pounds of harvested marijuana while taken three people into custody, according to a report in local media.

Public Agencies Strained by Enforcement Workload

The extent of illegal cannabis cultivation also strains the resources of other public agencies. In 2015, Jackson County code enforcement personnel handled 604 cases, none of which were related to marijuana. Through September of this year, the office has had 1,006 cases, with 663 of those related to cannabis cultivation. The local office of the Oregon Water Resources Department has also seen a spike in activity, with complaints of water theft jumping from 39 in 2015 to 195 this year.

Much of the illicit cannabis cultivation is occurring on what are ostensibly hemp farms. The Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission recently reported that nearly half of the registered hemp farms inspected by the state are actually growing marijuana. About 25 percent of the hemp operations refused entry to inspectors, according to state agencies.

Charles Boyle, a spokesman for Brown, said that the governor takes the situation in Jackson County very seriously, noting that she created a multi-agency team to fight illegal marijuana cultivation after lawmakers passed legislation amending how the state regulates its hemp and cannabis industries. Brown also directed the Oregon State Police to dedicate additional resources to the area and doubled funding for cannabis law enforcement grants in the region.

“The message is clear – Oregon is not open for business to illegal cannabis grows,” Boyle said. “These are criminal enterprises that deplete water resources while our state is in drought, hold their workforce in inhumane conditions and severely harm our legal cannabis marketplace.”

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