at the heart of the clandestine farms of the “narcos”

Like every week in the sky of California. Riverside County Sheriff’s Crews prepare to conduct a special operation. Their target, illegal cannabis plant farms. The two pilots must go to a specific place, which they have spotted a few weeks before. “If you look through the tarps you can see green, it’s cannabis”, describes one of the pilots. On the ground, their armed colleagues are preparing to enter the property, search warrant in hand. All the caravans are searched, but the owners have already fled. Inside the greenhouse, hundreds of illegal plants, and a quasi-professional installation. Plastic sheeting, fans, and chemicals to treat plants.

Plants draw water from groundwater

In total, there are 250,000 dollars worth, just under these two units. The sheriff’s team will then methodically destroy everything. The greenhouses are gutted, the plants are cut. Within an hour there is nothing left. Cartels have set up huge cannabis farms all over California. While it is legal to use this drug in the state, a specific permit is required to grow it. So to thwart the police, the criminal organizations have hidden in the most remote areas, in the desert. And since plants need a lot of water, they draw it directly from groundwater.

In California, operations to dismantle cannabis greenhouses have more than doubled in one year, but the market is so profitable and the fines are so low that it is almost impossible to prevent new illegal plantations from appearing.