i think that in the time in the future, i am not sure when, but a time in the future i can imagine a situation where we will have alternatives to isolation for people who have two doses of the vaccine. how we do like to be beside the seaside. coastal towns are the biggest winners, as the uk economy bounces back from lockdown. and at euro 2020 the spotlight is on wales, who will be looking to seal their spot in the last 16 when they take italy in rome. now on bbc news, as more us states move to legalise marijuana, there has been a rush to cash in on the business. in new mexico, a bizarre boom and bust of marijuana has become a cautionary tale.

this is the latest front line of the cannabis boom in the us. a massive legal marijuana operation on native american land. the suspects were found staying at a farmington motel where they occupied 19 rooms. police found around 2000lb of marijuana plants and substances in multiple groups. there is evidence of human beings that are not here any more, they have just vanished. in the summer of 2020, hundreds of chinese immigrants moved to shiprock, new mexico, believing they were taking well—paid jobs on hemp farms. they found themselves prey to unscrupulous entrepreneurs, who took advantage of the confusing laws that govern this industry. navajo nation farmers are calling for help against farmers for illegally growing marjuana. as more us states move to legalise marijuana, people are cashing in on the so—called green gold rush. you traitor! but some see the events in new mexico as a warning

of things to come. this is a cautionary tale to our leaders, our policymakers, our lawmakers across the us that if you don't carefully plan out your laws and regulations, it can cause a big problem. we trace the origins of this case a california and explore how a similar crisis could be brewing in oklahoma. it's a gold rush or curse, i don't know which one you call it for oklahoma. when you drive through here, the air is fresh, before the hustle and bustle. it's very mind—settling, it puts your soul at ease. bea redfeather has lived on her property in shiprock for 30 years. new development here is tightly controlled by tribal bureaucracy, but injune 2020,

when the navajo nation was struggling with the pandemic, bea was shocked to find this new development across the street. out of the whole us, these non—natives came here, they picked the navajo nation to set up their shop. you wake up the next morning, boom, there's hoop houses. i'm not talking about one or two, i'm talking about 25 hoop houses that were put up overnight. although medical marijuana is legal in new mexico, both hemp and marijuana are illegal on tribal land. from a distance, you don't know what it is, you just see plants, until you actually zoom in and you realise, this is marijuana. the distinction between marijuana and hemp was central to the problems in new mexico.

the cannabis plant has different kinds of by—products, depending on how it's grown. the main difference is the thc level, the psychoactive compound that causes a user high. hemp has almost no thc and can be grown as an industrial crop for things like textiles and bio fuels. marijuana, on the other hand, has a high thc level, and is considered a controlled substance. last summer, struggling with job scarcity amid the pandemic, hundreds of chinese workers left traditional immigrant enclaves in california and new york to find work in the cannabis boom. irving lin made his fortune in california real estate. he saw the business potential in the green gold rush and helps connect asian american business people with investment opportunities in marijuana cultivation.

in new mexico, lin linked up with dineh benally, a former civil engineer and navajo farm official, benally claimed he had the authority to issue hemp permits. a questionable assertion at best, it was still enough to get the farms up and running. but red flags were quickly raised. you just see these massive operations, huge greenhouses, filling up entire plots of land, gates locked, you see cars coming and going at all times of night, most of them with foreign plates. it was very evident something very strange was going on in this community. 25—year—old brandon billie worked for benally as a security guard. there were no jobs, people couldn't go out of the reservation to go to work.

when he started, it opened up a whole new financial situation for everybody. we had 38 fields and 800 employees. when i noticed it going fishy was when i was not allowed on some of the fields. people were stealing the hemp out of the farms, they were getting high, some of them said they were getting headaches and just by the look of it and the smell, it didn't add up. you people that allow this hemp stuff are allowing this kind of violence into our community! billie was confronted by shiprock residents, concerned about the strong odour. tensions grew. you traitor! billie�*s mother feared for her son's safety. things got really bad where shots were being fired down on the farms, protesters were running people

off the road. i didn't know if he was going to come home. i didn't know if i was going to get a call from the police department. it's a female. i started telling my son, "you need to get out of there, "i don't want you to be caught in this big mess." but he kept saying, "well, dineh benallly hasn't paid me yet." but he kept saying, "well, dineh benally hasn't paid me yet." as the farming operation sprang up around her, bea redfeather led fierce protests against the so—called hemp business. there was a blue sedan that was guarding the hemp fields in front of my house. two non—natives got out

and they waved their assault rifles. that's what took me by surprise, this can'tjust be hemp. this is what it's come down to, i never had to have these firearms in my residence, but when it comes to your family's safety, you go to extremes to protect them. the suspects were found staying in a farmington motel— where they occupied 19 rooms. police found around | 2000lb of marijuana plants and substances in multiple rooms. - less than six months after chinese growers arrived in new mexico, police raided and shut down dozens of farms. what they found there was high—grade marijuana, not hemp.

it is sort of eerie, the evidence of human beings who are not here anymore, they just sort of vanished. people had to pick up and leave it as fast as possible. the fact there is still clothes hanging up and food in the kitchen, speaks to how quickly people thought they had to get out of here. there is some paperwork back here and says they are looking for records, information and evidence, controlled substance, including marijuana, thc, drug paraphernalia, scales, packaging material. in october 2020, police arrested 17 chinese workers trimming the buds off marijuana plants in a hotel. others living in trailer homes packed up and left overnight. itjust looks like someone turned and ran and just left everything behind. the detained workers were later released as victims of human trafficking.

some of them believed they were just cutting flowers. dineh benally has been charged by the navajo nation with assault and other offences and there's an open federal investigation into his farms. he's insisted that what he did was for the good of the navajo people. but others say this was just the result of greed. benally declined to be interviewed for the programme or to provide a statement. we have somebody who decided to make up their own rules and circumvent established law in the navajo nation. nothing in this operation was legal.

there wasn't legal business license, we're talking of thousands of asian immigrant workers, we don't know if their payroll was taxed or even if they got paid. this is the cautionary tale to our leaders, our policymakers and lawmakers across the united states that if you don't carefully plan out the laws and regulations, it can cause a big problem. archive: the police narcotics detail raids this field of the insidious - weed known as marijuana. wherever a part of a marijuana cigarette is thrown, _ seeds grow up and the plant becomes a plantation. - in the us, cannabis was officially outlawed on a federal level in 1970 alongside drugs like heroin and lsd. but as public opinion shifted, local governments have been pushing to legalise cannabis in opposition to federal law. california is about to vote again on decriminalising marijuana. l in the 1990s, dozens of us states started to legalise

cannabis for medical use. colorado and washington were the first solo recreational use in 2012. today, most states of legalise cannabis on some level, but the restrictions vary from state to state. this has made the legality of cross—state transportation, sales and conservation more complicated and it fuels a black market across the country. after the fiasco in new mexico, many chinese investors lost their life savings. but a new opportunity is on the horizon. for lin and his clients, looking to recoup their losses, it was an obvious choice to move

to oklahoma, the hottest weed market in the us today. it's kind of a wild, wild west. oklahoma didn't set any limits on the number of licences they would issue, you could drive down the street and find dispensaries all around us. this couple obtained one of the first cultivation licences and run a dispensary outside of oklahoma city. we have three containers we grow in, some of these grow houses are 10,000 square feet. last year, oklahoma issued more grow licences than any other state. nearly 10% of its population are registered to use medical cannabis. the big—leaf plants are indica tend to be enter they relax people and these plants are sativa, they give you energy and focus. oklahoma is known to be a very red state but the interesting thing is the number of very elderly people who are interested in cannabis now. more people are accepting of it as a medicinal plant. it smells really good. little lemony.

in oklahoma, a cannabis licence only cost $2,500, far less than tens of thousands of dollars in states like california. cheap land and electricity brought an influx of out—of—state growers and competition. there's huge benefits we've found, and we're proud of it and we feel like we're helping somebody. but the market is turned completely upside down. it's grown so fast and so much, in the state of oklahoma, there's no way they can visit all of these places and check them out, so you're inviting the illicit players into the game. behind the fence here,

there's a trailer house that i don't know how many people live in. this is just rural land available for houses, but they have enclosed their area and have their own special power grid in there. in this sleepy rural town, a group of chinese american growers started a massive marijuana farm. its owner declined to be filmed, but proudly showed us around his new cultivation rooms. at the farm, a dozen chinese farm hands work around the clock. for them, this is living the american dream.

the owner says his farm does everything by the book. but it's only legal to grow marijuana in oklahoma for consumption in oklahoma, and some fear the market may be flooded. if they made it totally recreational, there's only 4 million people in oklahoma. not even. there's no way they can consume all this. i just want them to operate under the same rules we operate under a comment. it's difficult to compete with people who don't follow the rules. in april, oklahoma's bureau of narcotics detained ten people from china and taiwan for allegedly selling bulk marijuana on the black market.

this medical marijuna farm is legal in the state - but state drug agencies say their business dealings are not. authorities have ramped up efforts to curb activities but this lawyer says his clients are law—abiding growers. there is an element of marijuana that ends up in the black market, and every state that has legal marijuana, i think there's a perception that every grow produces the maximum yield and that's just not the case. my chinese clients love america, this is not foreigners invading oklahoma, they arejust taking an opportunity. the perception there is something that is wrong with that is really bias. lin says he brings new clients to tour marijuana farms in oklahoma every other week. he advertises safe and abundant

water and electricity. the chinese grower that we met in oklahoma is confident that the market will keep growing. but going forward, climber�*s cannabis market but going forward, oklahoma's cannabis market will not be the same. it's happening in oklahoma, the prices are dropping. unless this state to tighten things up and really enforces the rules, i don't think it's going to get better before it gets worse. it's a gold rush or a curse, i don't know which one you call it, in oklahoma. as public opinion in cannabis in the us quickly shift towards decriminalisation and legalisation, dineh benally and irving lin wanted

to get ahead of the curve. this is a plant. it's not a... to me, they are overregulated. it's a medicine, it's a plant, it's for the people. last year, a poll showed 68% of adults support legalisation, the highest percentage in decades. with a democratic president in office, there has been a strong push to legalise marijuana on a federal level. disproportionally, young men and women of colour have been arrested and jailed for even carrying a small amount of marijuana. i believe the time has come to end the federal prohibition on marijuana in this country. but president biden has tread carefully on marijuana reform.

the president supports leaving decisions to the states. he also supports legalising medicinal marijuana. whether full legalisation happens or not, lin believes the chinese community will continue to invest in cannabis. the navajo community, however, has been left deeply divided. i have been shot through

this window twice. this damaged completely, my headlights don't work any more. i didn't want this to happen, i wasjust doing it so i can work. billie tried to stay away from home as much as possible to protect his family. everybody at one time was for the hemp, because they lost theirjobs in the pandemic. all of a sudden, things changed, people had a change of mind, the smell, the odour, loud noises, people didn't like that. everybodyjust talked against each other and i don't think that's going to be corrected for a while. redfeather has replaced dineh benally as the new farming board president. for her, healing won't come easy. i know the community members are still very upset because now we're battling the clean—up.

you can see it from here, it's an eyesore. a lot of people ask me, "why are you doing this, "why do you want to shut it down? "hemp is good." and i know the difference between hemp and marijuana. i'm not against hemp, i'm against how dineh benally and that farm board came up with the hemp license which is not approved through the navajo nation government. at the end of all of this, with the community stepping up, protest after protest, we were successful. feeling rejected by his own community, billie now works out of town. because of all the stuff that happened to me, ijust don't feel welcome any more, i would rather live in my vehicle somewhere else,

where no one knows me. in april 2021, the oklahoma senate approved legislation to force disclosure of foreign investment in marijuana businesses. more states across america are expected to legalise recreational cannabis, but on tribal lands, it's unclear if a similar policy shift will happen any time soon. part two of the weekend is a repeat performance of part one. yes, sunday has started on a cloudy note with the rain easing away off into the north sea.

the cloud is fairly widespread at the moment, but as the rain eases into the north sea, we will tend to see it thinning and breaking with sunshine coming through in england and wales. sunny spells and scattered showers in scotland and northern ireland. a few brisk showers here accompanied by a keen north—westerly wind. the wind direction will be a feature, coming in off the north sea. exposed north—east coasts will feel disappointing, 15—16 as the high. if we get sunshine coming through in south—east england, we may see 22 degrees. 72 fahrenheit. much warmer than that for the wales match in rome. 33 degrees quite likely. temperatures easing into the second half of the match. as the evening comes to a close. as we look at what to expect into monday morning, some rain pushing into the south and some of it turning quite heavy. this are of low pressure will linger across southern fringes of england

through much of the day. the heaviest of the rain likely in north wales and the low countries. but you can see the leading edge interacting so anywhere south of the m4 corridor we could see rain. some heavy at times. cloudy in england and wales. the best chance of sunshine in scotland and northern ireland, but the wind direction making the temperatures disappointing. we are looking at a high perhaps only sitting in the mid to high teens. that means clearer skies to the north could allow temperatures to fall away quite sharply in sheltered rural areas. close to freezing in places. widely seeing temperatures into single figures. feeling coolish on tuesday and on tuesday, cloud and rain gathering into the far north—west later and that weather front bringing rain into the north—west

through the week. gradually, low pressure moving to southern england with more rain here later.

this is bbc news — with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. more than half—a—million people in brazil have now died from coronavirus. experts warn the outbreak could worsen. people could worsen. in england who are at double