Are Mexican drug cartels financing drug 'agribusiness' in California?

http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs....

Smallcomb said Michoacan crime families are paying to have young men smuggled across the border, providing them food and guns and transportation to remote marijuana plantations in rural areas of California where 10,000 or more plants are routinely grown.

So far this year, nearly 200,000 plants have been whacked down in the Mendocino National Forest. Similar amounts have been uprooted in Mendocino and Lake counties, and about 70,000 plants have been pulled in Sonoma County. In total, about 62percent of the marijuana seized this summer is from this region.

Smallcomb and other law enforcement authorities say tightened border security has crimped smuggling of Mexican-grown pot, prompting Mexican drug traffickers to underwrite the costs of growing, harvesting and distributing pot inside U.S. borders.

With six weeks or more still to go in the annual marijuana harvest, at least 1.2million pot plants worth an estimated street value of $4.5billion have been ripped up on mostly public lands.

State agent Jackie Long said the dominant forces behind the surging marijuana production are Mexican crime families, who pay well for lonely pot garden vigils in remote regions far from home.

That's the first I've heard of this problem - once again, DAR, you bring more enlightening news to this forum! Thanks!

Aren't there a lot of small airplane hobby pilots in California? How about offering them a nice reward for every pot farm they discover and report? I bet there would be a lot of pilots paying a lot more attention to what they are flying over, if it meant they could make some good money for turning them in.

They need to be shot on site. They should not be allowed to purchase land anywhere in the US by any means.

recently on the US side of the border,,, the Mexican drug cartel was arrested for growing marijuana in our national forests,, street value,, 80 million

its best not to ask such things,,i wouldnt

a lot of pot is growing in Northern California

Yours sounds more like a statement than a question, but chances are, since the drug business is lucrative, that there'll be all kinds of support for it. Nailing the border shut for a year might not be such a bad idea, if for no other reason than to let everyone have a chance to sober up and look at what's going on.