A KILLING IN CANNABIS

A grimly fascinating true-crime yarn centered on California’s legal—and otherwise—weed business.

Who killed Tushar Atre? A detective asked that question of one of Atre’s workers, who replied, “It could be a hundred people.” One possibility, journalist Eden details, was his chief partner and sometime girlfriend, Rachael Lynch, who, though young, was an experienced dealer, “the only woman growing weed on a backwoods hill otherwise full of stoner dudes bursting with unvented testosterone.” Atre, after all, had screwed her over financially many times. Another possibility was a host of gangland rivals: the entrepreneur and bon vivant had crossed paths with plenty, Samoans and kids and heavies from the cartels and wildcat Hmong farmers. Still another was, well, any one of a hundred-odd employees, for Atre was a mercurial type who “routinely demanded and humiliated his…‘underlings’” and professed that “fear was the best motivational tool.” Atre and Lynch had a legal grow operation, working in a California so relaxed about pot that a local joke went, “Q: Where’s the best place to hide your cocaine in Santa Cruz County? A: Inside your bag of weed!” But the margins were tight on the legal side, with steep overhead costs and a heavy burden of taxation, which caused many growers to supplement their business with black-market sales and out-of-state consumers, in violation of state and federal laws. Atre’s operation was churning out huge quantities of pot and hundreds of kilos of hash oil, but he still had a bad habit of reneging on deals, skimming off profits, and cheating partners and workers. In that pattern of kicking over the traces lay Tushar’s demise, as Eden chronicles in a fast-paced narrative. But death isn’t the only outcome: The black market in pot collapsed, prices tanked, and now “the vast greenhouse complexes of the Salinas Valley again stand mostly empty.”

A complex story well told, and a cautionary tale for would-be drug kingpins.