California lawmakers call for investigation into "Wild West" of cannabis and other farm work.

Paige St. John and Adam Elmahrek report for the Los Angeles Times today:

California lawmakers are calling for a sweeping investigation into corruption in the state’s cannabis industry, legislative hearings on the exploitation of farmworkers and new laws to thwart labor trafficking in response to revelations of rampant abuses and worker deaths in a multibillion-dollar market that has become increasingly unmanageable.

The proposals follow aseries of Times investigations last year showing that California’s 2016 legalization of recreational cannabis spurred political corruption, explosive growth in illegal cultivation and widespread exploitation of workers. The Times found that wage theft was rampant and that many workers were subjected to squalid, sometimes lethal conditions.

A spokesperson for the state’s Department of Industrial Relations told The Times last week that the agency is examining the deaths of 32 cannabis farmworkers — never reported to work safety regulators — uncovered by the newspaper.

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The [Los Angeles Times investigation] found that California’s dual state and local cannabis licensing system created fertile ground for corruption by giving thousands of often part-time, low-paid municipal officials the power to choose winners and losers in the multimillion-dollar deals.

Local politicians held hidden financial ties to cannabis businesses even as they regulated the industry. Consultants and elected officials told of backroom lobbying and solicitations for cash — while criminal investigations were isolated and scrutiny was sporadic.

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Sheriffs confronted with cannabis workers living in squalor, without food, pay or the ability to leave, said they lack local resources to address the problem. They said the number of workers at risk is huge: The state has tens of thousands of illegal cannabis farms spread across vast remote regions, and even licensed farms are not closely watched.

“There used to be some state support,” Trinity County Sheriff Tim Saxon said, adding that the support focused on ripping out illegally grown plants, not on addressing exploitation of cannabis workers.

Saxon said he is reliant on private outside funding to investigate cases of human trafficking.

The Times investigation found little outreach to apprise cannabis workers of their rights. Those workers who knew to complain of wage theft to the California labor agency waited as long as two years for a decision, even after telling the state that their lives had been threatened. Lawmakers told The Times the labor department suffers from chronic staffing shortages, failing to fill already funded positions.

Interestingly, this story raises some of the same issues about workplace safety, housing, and regulatory state that are surfacing after the shootings in Half Moon Bay earlier this week, as reported in this LA Times story: 

It’s not news to Bernardina Medrano and Margarita Martinez that many migrant farmworkers along the San Mateo County coast live in “deplorable” conditions, as Gov. Gavin Newsom and county Supervisor Ray Mueller have described.

Medrano, 43, who pays $850 a month to share a two-bedroom trailer in Pescadero with four other adults and two children, has been here 16 years. Martinez, who lives in a garage, has been here more than 10.

They say finding affordable and safe housing is one of the community’s biggest obstacles and hope the attention focused on the area after Monday’s mass killing of farmworkers in Half Moon Bay will prompt political decision-makers and the public to finally listen.