Reefer Madness, Cali Style
Mexican drug cartels have helped make California the largest domestic supplier of pot in the nation Seventy percent of the plants are growing in state and national parks zReportage magazine has an eye-opening photo essay and story.zReportage:
TULARE COUNTY, Calif. – It is 5:30 in the morning in Tulare County, California and the temperature outside is already a balmy 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat is expected to rise well over the 100-degree mark by the day’s end. Deep in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, alongside a hairpin turn on a steep cliff’s edge, wait six SUVs. Next to them stand 15 Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) officers dressed in full SWAT camouflage gear, ready for action.
As the sun flirts with the mountaintops in the horizon, the Ranking Officer in Command (ROC) tells his group of men to hurry up because the bird (helicopter) is in the air and on its way. The men, a special SWAT low-crawl team, arrived hours earlier and had to trek three miles uphill through the dense, treacherous forest guided only by moonlight and the Global Positioning System. | photo essay and story
Your support is crucial…With an uncertain future and a new administration casting doubt on press freedoms, the danger is clear: The truth is at risk.
Now is the time to give. Your tax-deductible support allows us to dig deeper, delivering fearless investigative reporting and analysis that exposes what’s really happening — without compromise.
Stand with our courageous journalists. Donate today to protect a free press, uphold democracy and unearth untold stories.
Labor
The evidence is in: Minimum wage hikes tend to have little to no effect on employment, but can raise the wages of hundreds of thousands of workers.
Race
In California, an approach to Black reparations based on land access, ownership and stewardship.
Prison Reform
A tale of two states and the future of “involuntary servitude” in the West.
Economic Justice
The law, designed to protect consumers from financial aftereffects of a medical emergency, goes into effect in January.
Environment
The unprecedented lawsuit alleges decades of lies about the recyclability of plastics, propagated to increase production.
Economic Justice
New data shows the dramatic effect of the expiration of pandemic-era relief efforts.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.