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Fox News: Immigration raids hit California pot farms as Newsom criticizes tactics
- Laura Braden
- Sep 5
- 2 min read
EXCERPT: On July 1, the California excise tax on marijuana jumped from 15% to 19%. In January, Newsom's office said he would endorse halting the cannabis excise tax increase if a proposal ever ended up on his desk.
Amy O’Gorman Jenkins, the executive director of the California Cannabis Operators Association, said the legal cannabis industry in California is subjected to an array of taxes, noting that no other age-restricted product in the state is taxed at the same rate, including alcohol and tobacco.
"There continues to be this misunderstanding that the cannabis industry is this cash cow," she told Fox News Digital, noting that consumers will purchase illegal cannabis rather than products from the overtaxed and over-regulated local market. "That fact of the matter is we have a very significant illicit market that's well documented in California."
In addition, drug cartels have set up marijuana-growing operations in parts of the state. In a portion of California's Mendocino County, drug cartels have spent significant amounts of money to establish pot farms there, Mendocino County Sheriff Matthew Kendall previously told Fox News Digital.
Earlier this month, seven Chinese citizens were charged in connection with a multimillion-dollar drug-trafficking organization that allegedly grew and distributed marijuana across the U.S. Northeast. In 2020, seven Laotian workers were killed at an illegal marijuana farm in Southern California.
"We have not reduced the illicit market. We haven't even made a dent," O’Gorman Jenkins said. "In large part due to the facts that consumers don't want to pay this much in taxes when they can order products online and go into illegal shops and spend half the price."
