Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal is in Arlington, Va., this week to testify in a formal DEA hearing about whether or not cannabis should be reclassified from Schedule I to the less-restrictive Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act.
He’s scheduled to testify today as a key expert witness for three states that oppose the federal government’s push to relax weed’s legal status: Nebraska, Indiana and Idaho.
Last Monday, the Outpost emailed the Sheriff’s Office to ask how Honsal came to be a witness for those states. (He’s appearing voluntarily, according to court documents.) We also asked who is paying for his travel and some specific questions about his planned testimony.
We heard back the next day.
“Sheriff Honsal is not going to comment on his testimony,” Public Information Specialist Erin Inskip responded. We followed up with a list of questions not directly related to his testimony, but rather about the circumstances of the hearing and other matters. Inskip said she’d try to get responses by last Thursday; we have yet to receive any.
But thanks to pre-hearing statement filed by the attorney representing those three anti-rescheduling states, we have a preview of what Honsal is likely to say. He’s expected to testify that California legalization of medical marijuana via Prop. 215 (1996) was “a turning point” that triggered the “green rush” across the Emerald Triangle.
He’s expected to further testify that loopholes in the state’s medical marijuana framework attracted bad actors from across the U.S. “as well as organized criminal groups, including Bulgarian, Chinese, and Russian organizations” that purchased property throughout the region to mass-produce cannabis for interstate and international distribution.
“In his experience, violence … is frequently used by organized crime groups and drug trafficking organizations to control workers, eliminate competition, and protect profits,” the statement reads. Elsewhere it says, “Based on his experience, ‘[Honsal] believes that legalization and changes in marijuana laws contributed to a significant expansion of the illicit marijuana market rather than its elimination.”
Local growers say they were disappointed to hear of Honsal’s plans to testify against loosening federal restrictions on cannabis, and they’re surprised by the claim being attributed to him here: that legalization led to an expansion of the illicit market.
That’s not what Sheriff Honsal used to say, according to Ross Gordon, a policy specialist working with the Humboldt County Growers Alliance.
“For many years, dating back to 2018 [or] 2019, Sheriff Honsal has really consistently, in his public statements, been supportive of legalization,” Gordon said in a phone interview last week. “He has consistently made the point that legalization of cannabis in California and in Humboldt County has reduced the size and scale of the illicit market, and also criminal activity associated with the illicit market.”
In October 2019, for example, Honsal told the Board of Supervisors that the number of illegal marijuana farms in the county was going down, adding, “that is what we call a win.” He acknowledged that a subset of people remained “hellbent on breaking the law” but said his enforcement team was making headway.
“And as far as we can tell, [such statements] really reflected the situation on the ground,” Gordon said. “We’ve seen this really dramatic decrease in illicit activity and criminal activity since legalization has been implemented.”
Gordon said the sheriff’s messaging around legalization changed over the past couple of years, starting around the time Honsal got involved with the Northern California Coalition to Safeguard Communities, aka “the NorCal Coalition,” a multi-county nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to combat human trafficking.
In August 2024, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office accepted a $334,615 grant from the NorCal Coalition, whose president is Sheriff Honsal himself. The group, whose board includes the sheriffs from Humboldt, Mendocino, Lake, Trinity, Siskiyou and Shasta counties, receives 100 percent of its funding from the Howard G. Buffet Foundation by way of another nonprofit, The Center to Combat Human Trafficking, which is financed by Howard’s dad Warren, one of the wealthiest people in the world.
As previously reported, Howard Buffett has what the Daily Beast once described as “a long history of donating millions to law enforcement agencies while serving as a part-time, unofficial member of some of them.”
The Sheriff’s Office planned to use its $334,615 grant award to hire three full-time employees — a property evidence technician, a program coordinator and a public information specialist — plus training and equipment for the new staff, a human trafficking campaign and Cellebrite computer software.
Cellebrite is an Israeli mobile forensics company has come under fire for alleged civil rights abuses such as violating the privacy rights of journalists and selling data extraction tools to authoritarian governments around the world.
In an interview with KMUD radio last week, Honsal said he and the other sheriffs in the NorCal Coalition requested funding from the Howard Buffett Foundation specifically to combat human trafficking in the region’s weed industry.
“This is just a funding source to add to shrinking budgets when it comes to marijuana enforcement in our North State,” he said.
Some of that grant money is paying for the NorCal Coalition’s use of a Butte County-owned helicopter for aerial surveillance in southern and eastern Humboldt County, as well as other counties. The low-altitude flights have caused anxiety among local growers with memories of pre-legalization CAMP raids.
Honsal acknowledged this community fear in his KMUD interview but said the helicopter remains an important tool for the NorCal Coalition and the Sheriff’s Office to do their jobs. They respond to complaints of illegal activity and survey for environmental crimes and other violations.
Earlier today, the fully licensed and permitted Alpenglow Farms in SoHum posted footage of the helicopter circling overhead.
Gordon said the expansion of activity from the NorCal Coalition has coincided with messaging about increasing criminal activity — “particularly press releases and press statements coming not necessarily from the sheriff himself, but from the NorCal Coalition … saying the illicit market is getting worse since legalization, or there are more problems, more crime or more labor trafficking.”
Local growers have been confused by this messaging, Gordon said. “That is not consistent with our understanding of what’s going on, and we’ve asked for clarification, like, ‘Why is there this belief or this idea that criminal activity associated with cannabis is getting worse post-legalization?’ … We want clear data.”
The DEA hearing
If weed is rescheduled, it would give legal cultivators access to commercial bank loans as well as federal agriculture grants and subsidies. It would also allow them to deduct business expenses on federal tax returns.
In October 2022, then-President Joe Biden asked the DEA and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to review how cannabis is scheduled, and less than a year later, HHS recommended that marijuana be moved from Schedule I to Schedule III. In May 2024, the DEA proposed a rule that, if finalized, would transfer marijuana to Schedule III. And in December, President Donald Trump issued an executive order instructing the U.S. Attorney General to “complete the rule-making process related to rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III” as quickly as possible.
The administrative hearing now underway is part of that process. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “This rescheduling action allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information.”
The proceedings, which began on June 29 and are scheduled to conclude later this week, are being heard by DEA Administrative Law Judge Derek C. Julius, who will hear arguments both for and against cannabis rescheduling. He can then make one of three recommendations:
- that weed should be reclassified as Schedule III, the category for substances with accepted medical uses and low to moderate potential for addiction;
- that it should be downgraded only to Schedule II, i.e. substances with accepted medical use but high potential for addiction; or
- that the U.S. maintain the status quo, with cannabis on par with heroin and LSD, substances with no known medical use and a high potential for abuse.
However, the Justice Department and DEA are free to ignore the judge’s recommendation entirely.
The three states that have recruited Honsal as an expert witness are not only opposed to rescheduling cannabis; they’re also suing the Trump administration in an effort to rescind the president’s executive order on medical marijuana.
Gordon acknowledged that Honsal’s “expected” testimony, as presented by the attorney for Nebraska, Idaho and Indiana, may not reflect what he actually says during the hearing, and he also noted that much of Honsal’s anticipated testimony refers to the period between Prop. 215, which legalized medical use, and Prop. 64 (2016), which legalized all adult usage.
Still, local growers are concerned that the sheriff might indeed blame legalization in general for an increase in criminal activity.
The Humboldt County Growers Alliance asked Honsal to issue a public statement explaining why he’s participating in this DEA hearing and what he intends to say. The group also requested “a clear statement” about how full legalization of cannabis in California has influenced crime in Humboldt County.
“From our perspective, that’s really important that the sheriff speak publicly to this,” Gordon said. “I think it’s a matter of importance not just for us as an industry, but really for everyone in the county to understand.”
The Outpost has submitted a Public Records Act request for information about Honsal’s participation in the DEA hearing.
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