WA House RSG - Committee Meeting
(September 17, 2024) - WSP Update

A panel from the State Patrol reviewed their work supporting local law enforcement to identify and undermine criminal organizations growing cannabis in Washington.

Here are some observations from the Tuesday September 17th Washington State House Regulated Substances and Gaming Committee (WA House RSG) Committee Meeting.

My top 3 takeaways:

• Committee members were introduced to members of the Washington State Patrol (WSP) Cannabis Enforcement Response Team (CERT) which focused on enforcement actions against unlicensed entities (audio - 1m, video - TVW).
  • Established in 2018, CERT handles investigations of illegal production, distribution, and diversion of cannabis from the legal market. They’ve partnered with Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) Enforcement Officers on investigations and police actions such as the 2022 emergency suspension of a retail license in Port Angeles.
    • WSP also conducts cannabis enforcement through continued participation in the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program. Learn more from the DEA’s 2022 final statistical report on the program.
    • According to a 2023 report by the Washington State Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC), WSP received $11,133,729 between fiscal years 2019 and 2023 for cannabis enforcement, which it relayed had resulted in:
      • "Eradication of 233,437 illegal plants.
      • "280 arrests.
      • "179 weapons recovered."
      • The report also noted that among local governments receiving $200,000 or more in local cannabis revenue, five had indicated using the funds for local policing.
      • Learn more from a November 2023 committee briefing on the report.
  • WSP Captain Jason Ashley and Lieutenant Pete Stock spoke to CERT's activities. Ashley deferred most of the presentation to Stock who explained that initially CERT efforts were focused on eradication of illegal plants, but their mission shifted to targeting the criminal organizations that controlled illicit cannabis cultivation in Washington.

• WSP Lieutenant Pete Stock described the evolution of CERT from focusing on eradicating illegal cannabis plants to targeting the organizations behind illicit growing operations, and the challenges faced pursuing these investigations (audio - 16m, video - TVW, presentation).
  • Stock explained that CERT investigative approaches involved surveillance, intelligence gathering, partnerships with other agencies, and serving search warrants. CERT investigators “confirm that there's odor at a particular location” and obtained records like those for utilities, vehicles, or employment information, he elaborated. And along the way he said officers “de-conflict with the Liquor [and] Cannabis Board to ensure that they're unlicensed, and they’re partners with us.”
  • Stock presented information about the CERT team's work mapping the relationships and financial transactions of drug trafficking organizations to identify and disrupt their operations.
    • A typical CERT investigation involved multiple suspects, residences, and vehicles, which Stock suggested “becomes very complicated for us to investigate.” This meant that the intelligence gathering aspect of their work was critical to determining organizational hierarchies as well as creating visual representations of the complex relationships involved. Stock explained that illicit grow operations were usually not stand-alone operations and that his team had been using intelligence gathering techniques to understand how the different grow operations were connected. He stated, “I have yet to look at, or review an investigation that involves one house, one person, or one car. As soon as my detectives start to dig into this, they find multiple houses, multiple people, multiple cars.”
    • Stock presented a sanitized affiliation chart to the committee that depicted the complex relationships that could exist between illicit grow operations. He indicated this was an example of the “smallest” affiliation chart his team has produced.
    • A recent change at CERT was that a team member had been studying financial forensic accounting methods to try to uncover the sources of funding for illicit cannabis grow operations. Their work was helping CERT follow the money and learn more about how these grow operations were being funded, Stock told lawmakers. He also mentioned that the culmination of many investigations involved warrants being served, a process where “not three or four people from the State Patrol or from any law enforcement entity that just drives to a residence to serve a search warrant on one person, these are large scale operations…overseeing 35 to 40 people” at a time.
    • One challenge was that most people working at a grow operation knew little about the wider criminal organization it was a part of, reported Stock. Many didn’t speak English, and he noted that even his analysts who could speak different languages were rarely able to get much useful intel about the larger organizations running the grow operations. Calling the financial resources of such groups “considerable,” he stressed that shutting down one grow house was not enough to deter these organizations, who would just restart their operations elsewhere.
  • Stock told the committee that illicit cannabis production had largely transitioned from large outdoor grow operations to smaller indoor grow houses over the past two years.
    • Stock explained that more illicit grow operations had shifted to indoor facilities which could produce cannabis year-round rather than seasonally to increase profits. Stock said, “Over the past two years, when we first started this…it was acres and acres of outdoor growth. We have transitioned, growing cannabis has now gone indoors.” He estimated indoor setups could earn criminal organizations approximately $1.4 million per month from 1,000 plants. Cannabis produced at the grow houses was most often transported to other states where adult use of cannabis remained prohibited.
      • Washington state’s position as an illicit cannabis exporter wasn’t new. Prior to commercial legalization, the 2008 Northwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (NW HIDTA) Drug Market Analysis designated the state ‘M7,’ a top marijuana producer with involvement from domestic and international drug trafficking organizations, information which was subsequently reiterated in a 2010 HIDTA report to Congress. 
    • According to Stock, indoor grow houses posed a significant hazard to law enforcement officers due to structural instability, black mold, and the use of hazardous chemicals. Environmental and security risks required significant effort “to ensure that our people are doing this safely.” Moreover, he pointed out that the chemicals found in grow houses could be particularly dangerous, alleging some could cause a person to “lose 50% of [their] lung capacity, just like that.” Stock said that his team partners with the Washington State Department of Ecology (DOE) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “specifically the California EPA”, to learn more about the hazardous chemicals. Dangers from indoor operations were so great, Stock remarked, “we…may not always eradicate these plants. If we identify it's too dangerous or there's too much at stake and putting our personnel at risk, we will use other means to disrupt but it may not mean going in and exposing ourselves to these plants.”
    • To adapt to the hazards posed by indoor grow houses, CERT had partnered with WSP SWAT when executing warrants, explained Stock. He added that CERT investigators were receiving specialized training to mitigate the hazards posed by the grows. But policing plants had proved to be “way bigger than we are, for six detectives and one supervisor. So criminality has now become our focus, and not so much the plants,” he argued. CERT also partnered with local law enforcement agencies in jurisdictions where they were taking actions, whom Stock claimed could be unaware of the hazards they might encounter.
    • Views on cannabis cultivation among Washington law enforcement has been complex, given the state is one of the few with an adult use market to continue criminalizing personal cannabis grows. Since voters legalized in 2012 there has been interest in approving limited adult cultivation in state task forces, by cannabis advocates and the industry, and in the legislature.
  • Stock concluded with an outline of CERT's vision for the future, stating that the unit would be focusing on investigating financial aspects of the organizations in addition to continuing to disrupt unlicensed cannabis production operations.

• Legislators on the committee had several inquiries around interstate and local law enforcement cooperation, human trafficking, CERT’s caseload, and long term strategies to disrupt the illicit cannabis sector in Washington.
  • Representative Melanie Morgan asked about interstate cooperation related to investigation of cannabis diversion outside of the state (audio - 1m, video - TVW).
    • Ashley replied that the WSP generally assists local agencies with their investigations and does not take a lead role in cases that originate outside of Washington state.
    • “We have partnerships with the DEA and our narcotics task forces,” Stock observed, but “I don't know the specific national organizational structure as it relates to cannabis.”
  • Co-Chair Sharon Wylie wondered whether local law enforcement agencies “automatically coordinate” with WSP regarding illicit grows. Ashley responded that the WSP was regularly contacted by local agencies to assist with investigations which he attributed to the environmental dangers posed by cannabis grows (audio - 1m, video - TVW).
    • The coordination wasn’t automatic, Stock noted, but he argued it was “really dangerous for agencies now to just react and respond to these calls without knowing what they're walking into.”
    • Wylie asked for additional information about the number of requests for assistance the unit received from other agencies. Stock explained that they do not specifically track this and he would need to get additional information from his staff to respond to Wylie’s question.
    • Ashley added that the WSP is partnering with DOE and the Washington State Office of the Attorney General (WA OAG) to investigate the environmental offenses associated with illicit grow operations and to “prosecute those environmental crimes, because they create an ecological impact to our communities, runoff ditches, our drainage situations.” 
  • Wylie then asked "are the workers in these grow houses being essentially trafficked?" (audio - 2m, video - TVW)
    • During his presentation, Stock had commented “The other challenge that we've been facing over the years is that when we go to these residences….people who tend to grow, have very little information about the criminal organization that they are working for.”
    • In response to Wylie’s comment, Stock replied, "Yes, I would say they are victims, and they are being labor trafficked from overseas.” He went on to explain that workers were often “not paid, and they have to stay there and tend to this cannabis grow,” suggesting a possible reason those arrested at grow houses only had minimal information about the criminal organizations exploiting them. This was another aspect of their work which made criminality “become our focus, and not so much the plants.”
    • Challenges associated with criminally-run grows that relied on trafficked labor also came up during a 2022 work group meeting on personal cannabis cultivation policy.
  • Wylie also inquired about CERT's annual caseload. Stock estimated that “with just five detectives, [CERT investigated] maybe between 10 to 15 cases a year,” reiterating “these investigations are highly complex, and when you look at that affiliation chart it is considerable resources and time to even do one” (audio - 1m, video - TVW).
  • Morgan asked WSLCB Legislative Relations Director Marc Webster—who’d also presented during the meeting—about the agency's ideas to “temper” illicit cannabis markets (audio - 1m, video - TVW).
    • Webster replied that the WSLCB valued its partnerships with law enforcement agencies and believed that addressing illicit cannabis markets required “a multi-pronged approach because I think we're seeing a variety of ways that the illicit market operates.”
  • Co-Chair Shelley Kloba wanted to know how a person could report "that weird house down the street" to CERT if they suspected it as being operated by a criminal organization (audio - 2m, video - TVW).
    • “If it's an emergency and there's a true environmental impact or something that's occurring right there, 911” was appropriate, Ashley said. For anything less definitive he advised contacting their local Crime Stoppers of Washington or reporting to the WSP directly.

Information Set