Where There's Smoke by Char Miller & Jared Huffman

Author:Char Miller & Jared Huffman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780700625239
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2018-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

What are the policy implications of these intractable, if evolving, trespass grows? First, federal officials have recently strengthened pollution penalties for trespass growers. Among other penalties, growers already faced up to ten years in prison plus massive fines for “depredation of government property over $1,000,” which prosecutors charged to punish both Figueroa-Montes and Sicairos-Quintero for environmental damage (18USC §1361; Kemp 2014). But Representative Jared Huffman (D-CA), whose district includes the Emerald Triangle, promoted sentencing enhancements for trespass grows, on the grounds that “Environmental damage is almost never fully accounted for. Under current law, environmental damages such as water diversions and vegetation removal are not considered as separate or aggravating offenses” (Kemp 2014). The US Sentencing Commission responded by creating new guidelines that allow prosecutors to charge water diversion and vegetation removal as separate or aggravating offenses (Huffman 2014).

These heightened penalties will most likely exacerbate the social consequences of the grow sites. While Representative Huffman was correct that the guidelines had not included water diversion or vegetation removal, both serious environment harms, he overlooked the fact that adding these charges does nothing to prevent trespass grows. They will not help police catch grow organizers or help prosecutors build cases against them. The people facing these sentencing enhancements will be low-level growers who already face stiff penalties, have no useful information, and are the least culpable and most replaceable members of the operations. In addition, as communities of undocumented immigrants gradually learn of these harsher penalties, they will be less likely to voluntarily join trespass grow operations—encouraging recruiters to use deception instead.

Tougher immigration law enforcement has recently become a key focus for the federal government. President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are likely to create tougher sanctions for illegal immigration and increase funding for immigration law enforcement. Such laws will make trespass grows easier. The more US law criminalizes undocumented immigrants, the less reason they have to avoid criminal activity. If we increase their distrust in law enforcement, we will facilitate the recruitment and conviction of low-level growers while making it harder to track down the grow organizers. Immigrant detention will clog the prison system, reducing the resources available to pursue and detain grow organizers.

A very different policy trend is the spread of state-level marijuana legalization for recreational use by adults. As of February 2017, eight states and the District of Columbia have passed ballot initiatives to legalize the drug. Trespass grows are concentrated in California and Oregon, where legal marijuana markets are displacing the illegal market. Still, even before legalization, California and Oregon trespass grows primarily exported their marijuana to other states. So even as demand for illegal marijuana in California and Oregon falls, trespass grow marijuana will remain.

Still, widespread marijuana legalization has the potential to make trespass grows on public lands economically unviable. Just as legalization replaces illegal dealers on street corners with regulated dispensaries, it replaces marijuana produced on trespass grows with marijuana from licensed grow operations. As the legal market matures and prices fall, it will divert increasing market share from the trespass grows.

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