In his latest book, Matthew Gavin Frank chronicled his summer working at a marijuana collective in California. An excerpt from Pot Farm:
[W]hether a grower is compliant or not, local law enforcement is known to raid these farms, arrest many of those involved in their operation, and, reportedly, decimate the crop. Helicopters piloted by the California Department of Justice often fly low over the pot farms, visually estimating the number of plants on the property. … Each grower is issued a government-certified permit to cultivate a certain number of plants for a fixed number of patients. If an airborne law enforcement official, with binocular aid, suspects that the farm possesses even one more plant than the allowed number, the helicopter will land and, according to Lady Wanda, "All Hell will break loose."
Frank, in a interview, elaborated on the violence:
Pot Farms are raided all the time by both state agencies and private militias, oftentimes resulting not only in a decimation of the crop, but in the loss of human life.
Pot Farm owners have started employing ex-military folks as snipers who are stationed up in these tree forts in the redwoods as a security measure. At the ground-level, there’s still a lot of uncertainty. AIDS patients and folks suffering from all kinds of chronic pain do light work on these farms in exchange for the medicine that works best for them and carries the fewest side-effects. Many of these folks are simply fighting for easy access to their meds, without the threat of taking a bullet.
Cord Jefferson recently profiled other temporary pot-farm workers:
The [harvest] season usually begins in October, when California’s high-grade marijuana farmers chop down their plants and let them cure in heated warehouses for several days. Three to four weeks later, when the crop is sufficiently dried, the growers import a team of temporary laborers. They’re like the migrant workers who follow seasonal fruit and vegetable crops, only they’re often young, white private-school kids armed with scissors. Their sole job is to trim away excess leaves from the pot buds, leaving only the most potent product for distribution.
The Dish 