DCC Releases Enforcement Statistics for ’21 & ’22 as Eradication Efforts Grow

Press release from the Department of Cannabis Control:

Year-over-year gains hit double and triple digit percentage increases for search warrants issued, illegal cannabis plants eradicated, firearms seized, and arrests  

The Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) released its 2021 and 2022 enforcement statistics, highlighting year- over year trends that show significant growth in the number of search warrants issued, arrests made, and illegal cannabis plants eradicated in an effort to tackle illegal market operations that threaten the health and safety of the environment, communities and consumers and undermine the licensed cannabis market.

DCC-led search warrant operations increased from 62 in 2021 to 155 in 2022, a 150 percent increase. DCC also seized over 41,726 pounds of illegal cannabis in 2021 and more than 144,254 pounds in 2022, a 246 percent increase. Arrests more than tripled, with 17 in 2021 and 56 in 2022. And DCC led operations that seized $243,017,836 worth of cannabis last year, a 212 percent increase from the $77,772,936 seized in 2021.

“Through each enforcement action our teams gain a better understanding of how these criminal operations work which helps us better focus our resources and amplify our results to protect the health and safety of all Californians,” said Bill Jones, Chief of DCC’s Law Enforcement Division. “I would like to thank the dedicated group of officers in our department who work closely with our law enforcement partners to make these operations successful. Together, we are cracking down on the illicit cannabis market and ensuring California maintains a well-regulated and legal marketplace that benefits Californians.”

DCC numbers break down operations by those it led, those it assisted, and the combined total of both, including those coordinated through Governor Newsom’s newly established Unified Cannabis Enforcement Taskforce (UCETF). UCETF is multi-agency, cross-jurisdictional taskforce designed to more efficiently coordinate local, state and federal resources that combat illegal cannabis operations and transnational criminal organizations.

More information can be found in the tables below:

DCC Led 2021 2022 Percent Change
Search Warrant Operations  62 155 150%
Pounds of Seized Cannabis  41,726.68 144,254.71 246%
Retail Value of Seized Product  $77,772,936.07 $243,017,836.53 212%
Cannabis Plants Eradicated   19,221 264,196 1,274%
Firearms Seized 40 54 35%
Money Seized  $6,091,730.11 $1,297,163.29 -79%
Arrests  17 56 229%
DCC Assisted 2021 2022 Percent Change
Search Warrant Operations  52 144 177%
Pounds of Seized Cannabis  296,780.21 295,546 0%
Retail Value of Seized Product  $492,367,234.23 $493,819,785.28 29%
Cannabis Plants Eradicated   720,327 696,016 -3%
Firearms Seized 37 85 130%
Money Seized  $1,324,344.09 $542,981 -59%
Arrests  83 119 43%
Combined Total 2021 2022 Percent Change
Search Warrant Operations  114 299 162%
Pounds of Seized Cannabis  338,506.89 439,800.70 30%
Retail Value of Seized Product  $570,140,170.30 $736,837,621.81 29%
Cannabis Plants Eradicated   739,548 960,212 30%
Firearms Seized 77 139 130%
Money Seized  $7,716,074.20 $1,840,144.29 -76%
Arrests  100 175 75%

To learn more about DCC’s frequent efforts to disrupt the illegal cannabis market, we encourage you to follow our Twitter and Facebook pages for updates.

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36 Comments
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Legallettuce
Guest
1 year ago

Legal sales are down 8.6% Enforcment is up 162%.

//amplify our results to protect the health and safety of all Californians//

Yet the traditional market owns +80% of the California market. In Vietnam the US would give daily statistics of enemy killed. The US lost the war.

Farce
Guest
Farce
1 year ago

Wow! And at this rate they will have stamped out all the huge cartel and international organized crime grows by….2100 or so! Then they can start on Oregon and Oklahoma…These guys have Job Security that’s for sure! Let’s keep giving them more money…after all- they are foremost in their mission protecting the profits of the corporate “good players” who took over the business!

SamD
Member
Sam
1 year ago

Taxpayers funding their own economic demise

Truth Be Told
Member
Truth Be Told
1 year ago

When weed was illegal local Sheriff’s optimistically claimed to eradicate 10% of plants annually. Now that it’s legal all forces combined probably don’t get 1%. The market collapse is the only thing putting a dent in the illegal (and legal) weed market.

Guess
Guest
Guess
1 year ago

Gee isn’t legalization great, It really cut down on crime and arrests! Fuckin joke

Bearjoo
Guest
Bearjoo
1 year ago
Reply to  Guess

Illegalization…the cop bill.

Guess
Guest
Guess
1 year ago
Reply to  Bearjoo

Good one

Patriot
Guest
Patriot
1 year ago
Reply to  Guess

Ya but all the teenagers that were suffering from terminal insomnia are miraculously healed. Now they just use it to balance out the meth jitters. And you still cant get a grower to admit they werent exactly insightful to vote to legalize it maybe too much smokee ?

Chef Jeff
Guest
Chef Jeff
1 year ago
Reply to  Patriot

For the record, I don’t know a single cultivator that voted for the corporate greed takeover prop 64, so maybe try giving up your false premise

Farce
Guest
Farce
1 year ago
Reply to  Chef Jeff

Umm….go into the archives and you will see lively debate before the vote. Yes- some local growers actually voted for it. A bunch of them. No they now will not admit it but they did!

Kym Kemp
Admin
1 year ago
Reply to  Farce

I voted yes.

0047
Guest
0047
1 year ago
Reply to  Patriot

Fentanyl is used to balance out the meth jitters lol

Truth Be Told
Member
Truth Be Told
1 year ago

It’s taking time to play out, but legalization, as mandated by Prop 64, and as orchestrated by greedy State legislators and a corrupt Governor, HAS reduced crime and arrests.

Prop 64 clearly favored consolidation and corporatization. Legalization also provided for dramatic overproduction, far beyond what the legal market could absorb, even before the State blew off the one acre cap. But just to make sure, the State refused to approve dispensary permits that could have absorbed some of the overproduction.

Prop 64 also reduced almost all weed offenses to misdemeanors or infractions, substantially reducing the risk for illegal growers and traffickers. Without the threat of felony convictions and years in jail the risk related price support system collapsed.

In the short run these actions guaranteed the perpetuation of a robust illicit market. But in the long run they guaranteed the return to the small farmers would drop below the cost of production.

All the squabbling over local ordinances has been a sideshow that obscured the inevitable corporate takeover and freezing out of the legacy growers.

Thatguyinarcata
Guest
Thatguyinarcata
1 year ago
Reply to  Truth Be Told

Is the dispensary bottleneck actually a state issue?

It seems like the problem is that a majority of municipalities have severely constrained retail opportunities locally. With few legal outlets to purchase from people are obviously going to continue to utilize unpermitted retail outlets. Last I heard, the LA county sheriff believes that unpermitted store fronts outnumber permitted about 3 to 1. And LA is fairly amenable to cannabis retail

Madrone is the best Supervisor in Humboldt
Guest
Madrone is the best Supervisor in Humboldt
1 year ago
Reply to  Truth Be Told

……

images (21).jpeg
Xebeche
Guest
Xebeche
1 year ago
Reply to  Truth Be Told

An invented crime, solely for the purpose of boosting funding for law enforcement.

thetallone
Guest
thetallone
1 year ago

Great. By next year all the illegal pot will be gone. Good work, guys!

Oliver Sutton
Guest
Oliver Sutton
1 year ago

299 combined total search warrant operations for 2022.

299/52 weeks in a year= 5.75 warrants a week

And that’s in the entire state if I’m not mistaken.

This is pathetic for a “multi-agency, cross-jurisdictional taskforce designed to more efficiently coordinate local, state and federal resources that combat illegal cannabis operations and transnational criminal organizations.”

Imo statewide they should be doing more like 50 warrants a day. Waste of tax money.

Farce
Guest
Farce
1 year ago
Reply to  Oliver Sutton

The grows in San Bernardino County alone would take this much activity and still be blowing up. I think we are in another CAMP-like scenario- They tell us they are almost about to really really get the bad guys but they need a little more money. Nothing really gets done but they do get to keep their program…expand it even and year after year giving us reports like this. The media prints their press release and the gullible public believe something is moving forward but yeah not really just hella money spent on this jobs program for cops…and government paper pushers.

Vermin SupremeD
Member
Vermin Supreme
1 year ago

I’d bet my LIFE on the fact that the quantity of busts hasn’t changed ONE BIT. The amount of REPORTED busts has though. Now that the market is in the toilet, the cops can’t sell their confiscated pot on the black market anymore… Oh well. Might as well put it on the books boys.

Ed Voice
Guest
Ed Voice
1 year ago

Its too bad they didn’t breakdown the totals by Counties. Wonder were Humboldt is ranked in all the numbers?

Natalynne DeLapp, executive director of the Humboldt County Growers Alliance asked in another blog: “Which agricultural product is more regulated than cannabis?”

I guess she needs to read this report to get her answer…

Thatguyinarcata
Guest
Thatguyinarcata
1 year ago
Reply to  Ed Voice

What?

Do you think this report indicates that there is a less regulated crop?

Thatguyinarcata
Guest
Thatguyinarcata
1 year ago
Reply to  Ed Voice

What?

Does something about this report indicate that cannabis is lightly regulated? Or that there is another crop that’s more regulated?

Ed Voice
Guest
Ed Voice
1 year ago

There are no other agricultural product as regulated than cannabis in California (hello) and this report tells you why. I don’t think the tomato, corn, strawberry, apple, orange, chicken, dairy, grape, walnut etc. industry’s need to worry about being served a warrant for illicit cultivation, sale or transportation of illegal food grown in California, I thought DeLapp’s question was ludicrous and shows how low the Humboldt Cannabis industry will stoop, using false equivalence fallacies.
My question to her is why, why is cannabis regulated more than any other ag crop in California? To me, its pretty obvious…

Thatguyinarcata
Guest
Thatguyinarcata
1 year ago
Reply to  Ed Voice

Because of a bias based in racial animosity that is 3 or 4 generations old leading to it being treated like a devious incursion into society?

The presence of violent state intervention is the evidence of the insane over regulation, not a justification for it

Ed Voice
Guest
Ed Voice
1 year ago

Out of all the permitted cannabis farms in Humboldt, how many are 3 or 4 generations old, with the same family, all since the 1960’s or 1970’s?

3 to 4 generations would span 100 years…

Last edited 1 year ago
Kym Kemp
Admin
1 year ago
Reply to  Ed Voice

Ed, Thatguy is talking about the way marijuana was made illegal beginning in 1916 as a way to attack hispanics. https://www.history.com/news/why-the-u-s-made-marijuana-illegal

Ed Voice
Guest
Ed Voice
1 year ago
Reply to  Kym Kemp

Thank you for filling in the blanks from Thatguyinarcata

Thatguyinarcata
Guest
Thatguyinarcata
1 year ago
Reply to  Ed Voice

I was answering your question about why Marijuana is regulated the way that it is and has been.

I feel like maybe I’m not understanding the point you’re trying to make, but it sounds like you’re pointing to the militarized police eradication of Marijuana that hasn’t been subjected to the onerous regulatory framework as justification for the militarized, police based, regulatory model? Correct me if I’m getting that wrong, but if not that is some very circular logic. There’s no objective quality of the cannabis plant that justifies the legal framework that has built up around it over the last century

THC
Guest
THC
1 year ago
Reply to  Ed Voice

Ha, go down south and try to start up a farm and grow some tomatoes, corn, strawberry, Etc .. without getting a permit and see what happens to you Ed.. Only real difference is most agricultural industry in America now is owned by just a couple big corporations through subsidiaries in conglomerates that have enough money to pay fines and Lobby the government. Which is exactly what’s happening to the weed industry.. I mean s*** they send the FBI to Raid the Amish for selling raw milk for petsakes.

Ed Voice
Guest
Ed Voice
1 year ago
Reply to  THC

OK, good discussion, thank you for the info. However, why does the Humboldt Cannabis Industry (HCGA) think they are the most regulated ag crop in California?

Legallettuce
Guest
1 year ago
Reply to  Ed Voice

Mainly because all the other farms/crops in California have already been neutralized. Weed is the only crop they don’t have full control over. They also never will but that is beside the point. Here is a great read, Amos explains it all.

https://returntonow.net/2022/04/08/amos-milller-appeals-court/

Last edited 1 year ago
Ed Voice
Guest
Ed Voice
1 year ago
Reply to  Legallettuce

Thank you for that…

Kicking Bull
Guest
Kicking Bull
1 year ago

Do the good gangsters at the DCC keep a running tally on the overdose gains? Suicides? Divorces? Foreclosures? Homes abandoned? Businesses shuttered?

I know, I know.. what this mob really cares about are the salamanders…

No tally for salamanders saved?

Guest2
Guest
Guest2
1 year ago

I wonder if they know medical cannabis is still legal to grow yet? No enforcement agency seemed to understand the laws they were enforcing until last year, and some are still unsure to this day (Ex. Water board and code enforcement).

Heads up folks, an insider told me that cannabis Enforcement is going to be off the charts this year. Make sure to keep your gardens under 400 sq ft (200/100 sq ft depending on the size of your parcel), Get your 215s up to date, and make them visible. You still have the right to grow your own medicine, it’s the one thing legalization didn’t change. If enough folks do this and get harassed by enforcement agencies, we may have a case.