They're using what the local sheriff believes are illegal fertilizer and other chemicals, possibly to pollute the product, Crabtree says. Just as they were doing with fentanyl, they make it more deadly for users in California and elsewhere, she adds.

Cannabis has been legal for recreation in California for ten years, Eggers notes. But since then, an estimated twenty percent of the population of small, rural Siskiyou County (7,000 out of 42,000 people) are Asian-origin marijuana cultivators who have flooded the area since.

Crabtree likens the Chinese pot strategy to their involvement in the fentanyl trade.

Peter Schweizer and their team at Government Accountability Institute have exposed so much about the Chinese infiltration of our illegal drug system on the West Coast, Crabtree says, especially these fentanyl precursor chemicals that come in from China into Mexico and then up to California.

Eggers details the process. With the help of real estate agents embedded in the scheme, they buy property deeds through obscure LLCs and shell companies, then they appoint proxies to run marijuana grow operations, and it takes over from there. They're leveraging the accessibility and that they can get capital from overseas, he says. Just in this area, up to $2 billion dollars' worth of marijuana a year.

The illegal growers have a ready market in San Francisco. I was just shocked by the level of detail Strack had, Crabtree sys. She went with the [Siskiyou] sheriff's office down to where they were busting these people. They bulldoze the equipment, but they spring right back up because they don't have enough law enforcement in that county to really fight this.

And, of course, Gavin Newsom's not doing anything about it. As we wrote in Fool's Gold (https://www.amazon.com/Fools-Gold-Radicals-Traitors-California-ebook/dp/B0DJCVV85G), and as we've talked about on this podcast before, Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have prevented Chinese or other foreign nationals from owning any kind of agricultural property in California. It was passed by the supermajority in the state legislature, and he did nothing.

The book documents the many business and financial ties Newsom has to the Chinese who have invested in his winery business. This is how his ties to China are, Crabtree adds.

Meanwhile, the fish weren't biting in Montana.