California expands largest US illegal pot eradication effort

By DON THOMPSON
Associated Press

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s four-year-old legal marijuana market is in disarray. So the state’s top prosecutor says he will try a new broader approach to disrupting the illegal pot farms that undercut the legal economy while sowing widespread environmental damage. The state will expand its nearly four-decade-old multi-agency seasonal eradication program. It’s the nation’s largest and this year scooped up nearly a million marijuana plants. California will turn it into a year-round effort aimed at investigating who is behind the illegal grows. Attorney General Rob Bonta said Tuesday that the new program will attempt to prosecute underlying labor crimes, environmental crimes and the underground economy centered around the illicit cultivations.