The Guardian said that the legalization of marijuana in Colorado has yet to curb illegal growing of cannabis plans in federal lands, for example. However, the effects of the state, which limited commercial decriminalization, remains to be seen as national forest police have found over 100,000 cannabis plants ay sophisticated farms in the vast Rocky mountain wilderness. The British paper said that majority of the products from the pot farms go to other states where marijuana is still considered illegal.
Special agent Laura Mark in charge of the Rocky Mountain region said about the pot farms, "Everyone's speculation was, you legalize it and the problem will go away, but we have not seen a decrease. And at this point I would say I do not anticipate an impact or reduction in these grows just because marijuana has been legalized."
Under the state rules, growers need to put a microchip on each of the plants they grow for its newly-legitimate business. The microchip then is recorded and monitored in the Marijuana Inventory Tracking Solution of the state via a radio frequency identification signal (RFID). The tag system desinged by a Lakeland, Florida-based crop-tracking software seller, Franwell, has not sit well with cannabis growers, Businessweek said. Although a batch package costs $0.25, legal marijuana business owners complain about the overhead costs incurred by the tracking system just to comply with the law. The growers also need to follow a lengthy ticketing procedure to document and delete the plant information from the system.
Store manager Jessie Levy for the dispensary Native Roots said, "Plugging and chugging numbers is what most of my management staff is doing now. It's like, guys, it's a plant."
Although this could be seen as partly the reason why cannabis growers opt to secretly grow plants in national forests, for example. it could either be that business owners are foreseeing the legalization of marijuana across America, and would like to be the first to cash in.
Meanwhile, assistant special agent Heiko Bronhoff, who is with a team currently tacking another secret farm, has expressed his dismay with the lack of support in park service from local law enforcement agencies. He said, "In a lot of cases they have made a determination that this is a federal issue not a state issue any more and they have stepped back. [They tell us] 'you guys do what you need to do but we are not going to support you in the way we used to'."
