For several years the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) was feared by growers all over the state of CA. Armed with big budgets and helicopters, CAMP could swoop in at any moment and your crop was gone.

CAMP is officially gone in California, replaced by the Cannabis Eradication Reclamation Team (CERT).

Smaller in size than CAMP, CERT is still on the hunt for illegal marijuana grows in the Golden State. According to a DOJ spokeswoman, CERT’s tally for the year stands at  ”792,105 plants, 147 sites, 20 arrests, 24 weapons, 613 pounds [of] processed marijuana.”

While CAMP had five 12-member teams, CERT has only 3. Most of their budget comes from the DEA.

The major difference between CAMP and CERT is that the latter is not only pulling plants from the woods, they’re also pulling out trash, removing water lines, and cleaning up pollutants, rather than leaving it there for growers to retrieve next season.

Kudos to these teams for cleaning up environmental waste, but these grows wouldn’t even exist under marijuana legalization. There would be no need for teams to sweep out marijuana grows because the reduced price of cannabis would make these grows economically impractical; in short, a uneccessary risk to try to compete with a legal market.

CAMP and CERT have one major thing in common; both are a waste of resources and money.

- Joe Klare

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