Pot was legalized for recreational use in Oregon in 2015. But years later, foreign drug cartels have taken advantage of the limited oversight by running illegal farms on the backs of exploited migrant workers, officials told ABC News.
Cannabis plants are grown at a Claudine Field Apothecary farm on Oct. 07, 2022 in Columbia County, NY.A day after Alejandra, which is not her real name, arrived for a job harvesting marijuana at a farm near Medford, Oregon, she says things took a harrowing turn when armed guards prevented workers from leaving.
The work was supposed to take 15 days, but ended up lasting an entire month, Alejandra said. “I feared for my life, because [the guards] would act really crazy. I kept thinking about my kids, my mother. Wishing I could see them again. That’s all I could think about.”Over the past year, ABC News has been tracking the underbelly of marijuana legalization in southern Oregon, where federal, state and local law enforcement are working together to combat the growing problem of “narco slavery.
A total of three neighboring properties were also raided. At one site, law enforcement says they counted a little over a hundred illegal greenhouses, more than 8,500 black market marijuana plants and 7,000 pounds of processed illegal cannabis. Both Alejandra and Maria asked for their real names not to be used, because they fear retaliation from the cartels.
In the summer heat, she and others were forced to work from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., Maria said. The guards would determine when they would wake up, eat and sleep.
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