It’s been common knowledge for some time that Jackson and Josephine counties are the scene of illegal marijuana growing.
County authorities, overwhelmed by the illegal operations, have sent notices to property owners with their annual tax bills.
The Mail Tribune and other news organizations have published multiple stories about rampant illegal growing this season, much of it conducted by foreign cartels employing immigrant laborers under slave-like conditions.
Fines from the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration for failing to register a farm labor camp can top $100,000.
When all of this started, after voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2014 and Congress made hemp a legal agricultural crop starting in 2018, it was perhaps understandable that property owners might be deceived by illegal operators who claimed to have all the proper licenses and permissions to cultivate cannabis legally.
But the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission will not confirm or deny if an individual is licensed to grow recreational or medical marijuana, according to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.
The government has been embroiled in a corruption row over the past week, with Johnson forced to abandoned plans pushed through parliament to protect one of his lawmakers who was found to have broken lobbying rules.
For the last two weeks, Eric Garner’s mother sat at her desk at a Staten Island office, continuing to work while listening to NYPD cops testify in graphic detail about her son’s killing in a police chokehold.
The suspect, Jesus Javier Uribe, refused to attend a scheduled court appearance on multiple felony charges including murder and attempted murder following his arrest Thursday at a house in southwest Las Vegas following what police characterized as a random criminal act.