Cristiano came to the United States on a promise.

My plan to come here was to make money and leave.

I was coming to work for weed.

He found work on cannabis farms in California and Oregon.

What kind of work did you do?

Transplanting, watering, leafing, harvesting, everything, what the plants need.

Cristiano worked for a few years, but he said some of the cannabis farms he worked on

didn't pay him what he was promised.

One farm, he claimed, still owes him about $4,000.

But he couldn't just leave.

Cristiano said he was stuck until he could get the money that he was owed.

I spent all the winter without money because of that, living in a van, and trying to figure out

how to get paid.

The legalization of cannabis in California and other states has brought a multi-billion dollar industry out of the shadows

and into brightly lit neighborhood dispensaries.

But a Los Angeles Times investigation found that cannabis workers in Oregon in California,

the people like Cristiano who are actually harvesting the crop,

suffer wage theft, hazardous workplaces, threats

of violence, and squalid living conditions.

I'm Gustavariano.

You're listening to The Times, Essential News, from the LA Times.

It's Wednesday, March 1, 2023. Today, the exploitation and misery of workers in America's

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