Like the pungent aroma of the fall's cannabis harvest, feuds over how to confront the explosion of unlicensed marijuana grows are permeating the remote Southern California agricultural enclave of Anza Valley.
Disagreements in this close-knit community have devolved into what one grower calls a "Hatfield-and-McCoy reality," where residents call law enforcement on their neighbors, inciting a culture war of sorts, spawning fights over policing, rural life, water and even immigration.
Located in an unincorporated part of Riverside County, 40 miles south of Palm Desert, Anza Valley's cannabis growers are protesting the county's permitting system. They contend it excludes small growers and hinders businesses that could buoy this economically depressed region where median income is about $19,000.
"I would have to say that, if our area of unincorporated Riverside County was given the correct chance to have regulated inclusivity, for small cottage cannabis farms, that it would bring us a chance to come out of poverty," High Country Growers Association Board member Jazmyn McCammon said. "This pathway would lead to less crime, with regulation, as well as opportunities for local employment."
But some longtime residents like Gary Worobec disagree and say the number of illegal grows has spiked to out-of-control proportions.
"When rumor got out that California was going to legalize marijuana in 2016, that's when the roof caved in," Worobec said while driving his blue pick-up truck through Anza Valley, surveying cannabis and hemp grows on a sunny weekday in early October.
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