Marijuana growers say they’re being unfairly targeted as state aims to crack down on illegal grows

By Evan Onstot

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    OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (KOCO) — State drug agents have conducted two dozen busts at marijuana farms since mid-April, with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics saying they’re the tip of the iceberg.

Many growers told KOCO 5 they’re being unfairly targeted because of the industry they’re in. The state argues many illegal growers have been flying under the radar, and they won’t any longer.

“Unfortunately, there’s always going to be criminal elements out there. In Oklahoma, obviously, it would be impossible to know how widespread it is,” said Mark Woodward, with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics. “But I can tell you our agency stays very, very busy working a constant string of complaints – some from the industry, some from citizens – about people who are not following the rules of State Question 788 and who are growing but they’re diverting all of it on the black market.”

Narcotics agents look for evidence of black market diversion, like human trafficking and foreign ownership. But with a large number of investors pouring into the state to take advantage of the opportunities medical marijuana provides, things get more complicated.

“We’re going to start to see that some of these local owners are nothing more than ghost owners, and the real owners are out of state and part of larger criminal organizations,” Woodward said.

Much of Yukon attorney Matt Stacy’s practice involves helping clients navigate medical marijuana rules. There’s plenty of business as investors move to the Sooner State to set up shop and grow the profitable plant.

Many of Stacy’s clients owned restaurants and other businesses but were forced to look for opportunities elsewhere because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“These are hard-working Americans. They’re just trying to invest their money,” Stacy said. “In the last year, my clients alone spent over $100 million in the state of Oklahoma.”

Stacy said complying with state laws is an extensive process for the more than 7,000 medical marijuana growers in Oklahoma.

“You have to submit a report every 30 days, and that report tells exactly how many plants you have, what you’ve done with your plants, how many sales you’ve had, who you’ve sold them to, what licenses were involved in those sales. It’s incredibly detailed,” Stacy said.

To Stacy and the industry’s supporters, marijuana, now that it’s legal in Oklahoma, is just another agricultural product – albeit, one with a multi-billion-dollar potential and lots of historical baggage.

“If you think about it as soybeans or Amazon or pick your product, we couldn’t trip over ourselves fast enough to support it and give tax incentives to it,” Stacy said. “I think there’s this fear because it’s marijuana, it has to be bad, but it’s not. It’s a legal product.”

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