Licensed Cultivator Selling Marijuana On Facebook Caught By Police, 22,000 Plants Destroyed

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office caught a licensed cannabis cultivator selling marijuana clones on Facebook's Marketplace to unlicensed buyers.
The Sheriff’s Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET), according to a press release, conducted a compliance investigation on May 9 in which undercover team of the Sheriff’s department contacted the seller, who agreed to sell the deputies 1,500 cannabis clones.
According to the Sheriff’s Office, the seller was known “to be a licensed cannabis cultivator, authorized to both cultivate cannabis to full term and function as a nursery for clones/starts.” In that transactions involving cannabis clones must be done between licensees, selling plants to undercover agents is very much against the law.
On May 16th, agents arrived at the seller’s licensed nursery to conduct the transaction. After the seller gave untagged clones to the agents, in violation of California Track and Trace requirements, the deputies produced a search warrant of the premises, during which the seller was out of compliance with the nursery license. There was also a huge discrepancy of thousands of plants reported as “lost” to the Department of Cannabis Control.

Due to the violation of the license, nearly 22,000 plants in the nursery and 15 pounds of untagged, packaged cannabis buds were destroyed. The seller was not arrested and, being in compliance with a full-term cultivation license, no full-term plants were destroyed.

Photo: Courtesy of Richard T on Unsplash