The sickening part is they'll destroy all of that, officially at least as nobody will notice a couple of kilos going missing, when the reality is that they would win far more "hearts and minds" by handing out the weed free to low-income MMJ users.
And you say "What were they thinking? No one will notice.......................... right!", but the reality is they did almost get away with it as you say it looked close to harvest and that means nobody's noticed for several months, it was just "luck" that the grow was found. You throw that in with the confusion over the legal marijuana situation and you would expect nobody to say anything as the average Johan/Johanna would think that a grow of that size was a legally permitted commercial one, it was hiding in plain sight mooning everyone and flipping the bird, for nobody would think the cartels would do something so audacious.
But it does show the true state of affairs, the one where such an investment, likely a couple of million, and a ready supply of illegal, effectively slave, black economy labour, has a return that is deemed to worth that sort of investment despite the risk, that they know they could get it distributed. You have the ridiculous situation where "legal" growers go out of business because they can't shift their stuff out of state to where the demand is present whilst the organised crime gangs can walk their stuff across the country. It could also be a sign that the increase in LEO/DEA/ICE activity, especially at the Mexican border, has put a dent in cartel activity and has forced them to make this move as getting the weed across from Mexico isn't so easy as before.
So expect more huge plantations to be found, and not just in Cali, as the cartels try to jump on top of the ever-changing legal MJ situation and the confusion that creates, for you'll end up with a situation like Holland where people rent out a room to the criminal gangs so the legal amount of plants can be grown there, with the person renting out the space getting a cut of the profits or a cut of the harvest, followed by perfectly legal growers being harassed as people decide they must be up to the capers because "nobody smokes that much".
There's a lot of confusion out there, things will be changing as the reality evolves, the games have just begun and there's a hell of a lot of teeth-gnashing, lies and whining to come yet as the "pro" and "anti" sides vie for position. And whilst that goes on, you'll find bigger fields are found across the country, and nobody will know exactly how many years they have been operating, as the cartels take advantage of the mess created because of the inability of seemingly rational people to think which is creating the confusion (along with the usual intra-departmental pissing contest).
The games have just begun, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
. In the north end of the San Joaquin Valley of California the authorities busted an illegal pot grow of GET THIS 540,000 plants growing on 194 acres (78.5 Hectares). Based on the video in the news cast it looked ready for harvest with some really big colas. They did not talk about value. I pencil it out at about $475,000,000.00 wholesale and triple that at retail.
