State lawmakers want investigation, hearings into ‘Wild West’ of California cannabis and farm work
LOS ANGELES — California lawmakers are calling for a sweeping investigation into corruption in the state’s cannabis industry, legislative hearings on the exploitation of farmworkers and new laws to thwart labor trafficking in response to revelations of rampant abuses and worker deaths in a multibillion-dollar market that has become increasingly unmanageable.
The proposals follow a series of Los Angeles Times investigations last year showing that California’s 2016 legalization of recreational cannabis spurred political corruption, explosive growth in illegal cultivation and widespread exploitation of workers. The Times found that wage theft was rampant and that many workers were subjected to squalid, sometimes lethal conditions.
A spokesperson for the state’s Department of Industrial Relations told The Times last week that the agency is examining the deaths of 32 cannabis farmworkers — never reported to work safety regulators — uncovered by the newspaper.
“We should be a little bit ashamed that we’ve allowed this helter-skelter approach to commercializing and legalizing the cannabis industry,” said Sen. Dave Cortese, a San Jose Democrat who leads the Senate Labor Committee. Cortese called California’s cannabis market the “Wild, Wild West.”
Cortese and Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, said they are discussing an agenda for legislative hearings this spring on the plight of workers on all types of California farms. But they said the abuse and exploitation chronicled in The Times’ investigation, “Legal Weed, Broken Promises,” highlights the hazards for those who labor in cannabis fields.
Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, said she intends to resurrect legislation to fight labor trafficking that was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and to include a mechanism to ensure that the state Department of Cannabis Control acts on evidence of such crimes. The Times found that the agency failed to respond to worker complaints and even to abuses uncovered by its own staff.
Assembly Labor Committee Chair Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, told The Times it is important to act now, before labor abuses become standard practice in the emergent legal cannabis industry.
The Assembly’s Public Safety Committee chairman, Reggie Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles, has declared himself the state’s “cannabis cop.” He has vowed to tackle failures highlighted by the newspaper’s reporting, including farmworker fatalities and exploitation and the corruption that plagues cannabis business licensing at the city and county levels.
“People dying from harvesting or processing cannabis — it’s just outrageous,” Jones-Sawyer said.
He said he would seek a state investigation into licensing corruption, particularly in areas highlighted by The Times.
“It’s very important to me that we finally get a grip on this and start to crack down,” he said.
None of the inquiries are guaranteed to happen. A corruption investigation would need approval from the Legislature’s audit committee, which next meets in March. Likewise, legislative hearings on farmworker conditions have yet to be presented to Senate leadership for discussion.
A spokeswoman for California’s central Labor & Workforce Development Agency said its labor safety branch was “assessing” cannabis worker deaths reported by The Times “to determine whether they have jurisdiction in each of the incidents reported.”
The newspaper found that California’s dual state and local cannabis licensing system created fertile ground for corruption by giving thousands of often part-time, low-paid municipal officials the power to choose winners and losers in the multimillion-dollar deals.
Local politicians held hidden financial ties to cannabis businesses even as they regulated the industry. Consultants and elected officials told of backroom lobbying and solicitations for cash — while criminal investigations were isolated and scrutiny was sporadic.
Then-state Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, in October called for state Attorney General Rob Bonta to form a task force that would target corruption in cannabis licensing but received no reply. Bonta’s office told The Times such action would be the responsibility of the state cannabis department.
Lawmakers taking up these measures said they are particularly sensitized to the treatment of farmworkers. Hurtado is the daughter of immigrant agricultural workers. Rubio’s parents first came to California as part of a federal migrant worker program, then returned without documentation because, as she said, “we still had to eat.”
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