Oh, my goodness. Of course it did. ticking bell tolling tonight, a History Lesson turneddetective story about what may be the first blockbuster news story ever published. Solving the mystery of the stolen Christopher Columbus letters, written more than 500 years ago by the explorer himself, announcing his discovery of the new world. He actually made the globe a globe. And thats pretty much the most consequential news ever published, isnt it . ticking its not easy to get to. But for centuries, pilgrims have made their way to a place where faith, mystery and miracles coexist. The story of these 11 ethiopian churches, each carved from a single block of stone, with no brick, no mortar, nor wood, is a creation story youll need to see to believe. ticking im lesley stahl. Im bill whitaker. Im anderson cooper. Im sharyn alfonsi. Im jon wertheim. Im scott pelley. Those stories, tonight, on 60 minutes. ticking but may not be enough. Statins may lower so, thats why science delivered vascepa. 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Valued at more than 11 billion, its worth more than the states grape and Almond Industries combined. California grows more pot than any place in the country. Nearly four years ago, voters approved a ballot measure called prop64 in california. It made marijuana legal for anyone over the age of 21. Advocates said a regulated pot industry would push out the black market and generate more than a half billion dollars a year for the state. As we first reported in october, its not quite worked out that way. We spent a week in a region of california that should be rolling in profits the Emerald Triangle. What napa is to wine, the triangle is to weed. Its mediterranean climate and rich soil are famous for producing some of the highest quality marijuana in the world. This might look like a home depot, but its a pot processing plant, and every one of those buckets is full of marijuana. At the height of production, this room is the biggest legal pot stash in the country. How much cannabis is in this room . Mikey steinmetz therere several thousand pounds. Alfonsi several thousand. laughs . Pounds . Steinmetz yes, tens of thousands, actually. Alfonsi wow, okay. Mikey steinmetz runs the flow kana factory. It packages weed from legal stateregulated farms in the Emerald Triangle to be shipped and sold around california to licensed stores. There is nothing like this anywhere else in the pot industry. This is like willy wonka stuff, right . Steinmetz yeah. We weve been called that before, the willy wonka of weed. Alfonsi so, did you have to create and come up with all this stuff . Steinmetz everything everything. And that thats what the hardest part is that, like, the technology and innovation is just starting to enter this space. Alfonsi forget those stereotypes about stoners. Some of his workers came from apple and google. They precisely weigh joints, inspect buds like gems, and package it to look more like highend cosmetics than cannabis. Oh, wow. Steinmetz its the different this is pineapple wonder. Does it smell pineappley . Alfonsi yeah, yeah. Steinmetz raised 175 million in just one year to get this off the ground, but despite all that, all along the supply chain, we found its been far from a gold rush. Is it a windfall . Are you all of a sudden rich . laughs are you making tons of profit . Steinmetz no. Candidly, like, the regulated market has been a fraction of what everybody expected it to be. Alfonsi why . Steinmetz you know, the Retail Market has been very slow to roll out. Alfonsi the slow rollout is because of the strict limits on opening pot shops in california. Although prop64 legalized marijuana across the state, it gave towns and cities the power to decide if pot businesses can open locally. 80 said, not in my town. Steinmetz so we have less retailers than we do in oregon, for example, in a state that has, you know, orders of magnitude larger. Alfonsi say that again. You have less retailers. Steinmetz theres less retailers in california than there are in the state of oregon. Alfonsi and remember, california growers can only legally sell their marijuana in california. And licensed stores like this one in the Emerald Triangle are rare. Give me a sense of, kind of, who the customers are who are walking in right now. Chelsea our demographic is over 60. That is alfonsi really . Chelsea yes, yeah. We get alfonsi are they old hippies, or are they grandparents with joint pain . Chelsea i would say theyre both. laughs alfonsi but theres not enough stores like this that sell marijuana legally, and theres way too much of it being grown. California grows 11 million more pounds than it can consume a year. Prices have crashed and made things even more difficult for legal businesses like flow kana. Theres an insane surplus of marijuana. Steinmetz yeah. For sure. Alfonsi is it possible that there are too many growers . That were producing too much weed in california . Steinmetz yeah, i mean, historically, california has been the the the supply of the nation, right . And and and its simply just the ma the numbers dont add up. Alfonsi its also not adding up for licensed pot farmers in the Emerald Triangle. We drove up what locals call the Million Dollar highway into the heart of pot country. For decades, pot farmers have hauled their weed on this winding, remote road. A lot of it is grown on family farms like casey oneills. They have been here since the 70s. He has just 45 marijuana plants. He calls them his ladies, and they are tucked between his rows of vegetables. Casey oneill all the cannabis in this row is strawberry valley. Weve got chard. Alfonsi oneill, who spent time in jail for cultivating marijuana before it was legal, was one of the first to get a license after prop64 passed. Oneill i grow cannabis because i really love it. I like to consume it. I like to be around it. Its something that provides my being and consciousness with tremendous love and support. Alfonsi but his being and consciousness is getting strangled by red tape and a laundry list of requirements that dont make sense to growers like weighing marijuana leaves, which is the part of the plant you dont smoke and cant get you high. Oneill i must take all of the leaf that comes off the plant. I must weigh it, i must record the weight, and i must put it in a locked compost facility. So its just, like, big brother has some funny ideas. Alfonsi because whats the worry with the leaves . Oneill thats it it its and its alfonsi if you cant smoke the leaf, why does it matter . Oneill exactly. Alfonsi then theres the cost of operating legally a major reason, oneill says, farmers he knows have decided to keep growing and selling marijuana illegally. Oneill for most people out here, the opportunity to participate does not exist. The barriers to entry are too high. The costs are too high. The skill sets are too low. The flip side of it is, people are not going to jail for cannabis. Alfonsi and whats the cost to you . Oneill so, when you factor in consulting fees you know, i just did a backofthenapkin calculation that, over the last three, four years, im well over 50,000 into it. Alfonsi 50,000 . Oneill yes. Alfonsi for what, permits . Oneill for for permits, for consulting. 2,500 a year for the water board discharge permit. Its 750 a year for the pond permit. Its 1,350 application fee to the county, plus another 675 when they actually give you the permit, annually. Alfonsi for a farm this size . Oneill for a tiny for the the the smallest farm that there is. And and thats one of the problems, is that alfonsi so what does that do to your profits . Oneill the what profits . Alfonsi you are not making any money right now . Oneill no. Alfonsi really . Oneill absolutely not. Alfonsi so wheres the money being made in california . It turns out, in the very place legalization was supposed to destroy the black market which often operates out of store fronts like this, in strip malls around the state. Those unlicensed shops dont have to pay for state and local permits and can sell marijuana much cheaper because they dont charge customers marijuana taxes, which can reach as high as 45 . So its cheaper and easier to buy pot on the black market, which is three times larger than the legal one. Steinmetz unlike other industries, we have this kind of intheshadows, unspokenabout competitor, right . So its not like california is fully raging, fully legal. Really, were were were building to, you know, a fully regulated state. But were not were certainly not there yet. Alfonsi to see the roots of the black market in the Emerald Triangle, it helps to get high. helicopter our guide was Mendocino County sheriff tom allman. Hes been chasing marijuana growers for 35 years. Wow, this is a big operation. Tom allman oh, my goodness. This guy is going to make millions of dollars. Alfonsi allman told us those white canopies belong to illegal marijuana growers undercutting californias legal pot industry. Allman see all those shiny straight things . Those are all marijuana growers. Alfonsi how do you know they are not, like, tomatoes . Allman laughs because theyre hidden in the woods. Look right here, i know those are not tomatoes, okay . Theres 12 of them right there. I can guarantee you those are not tomatoes. Alfonsi we were surprised they werent camouflaged. Allman explained since prop64 and the legalization of marijuana, the black market suppliers try to blend in with legal pot farmers, sometimes on the same property. So, the backers of prop64 said three things, right . First, they said, were going to raise a half billion dollars in tax revenue. Has that has that happened . Allman laughs no, no. Alfonsi they said, its going to eliminate the black market. Has that happened . Allman the mari the black market has greatly increased. Alfonsi has increased. Allman absolutely. Alfonsi and they said that, this would now allow Police Officers like you to focus on other things. Allman im looking forward to that day. Alfonsi right now his deputies are busy. Theres so much illegal weed in areas that are so remote, they have to haul it away by helicopter. Allman says he only has the manpower to get rid of about 10 of it. So what happens to the rest . We learned much of it is being smuggled east to the 39 states where pot is still illegal and prices are three times higher than in california. Weve heard these reports from state police that say theyre seeing larger shipments of marijuana moving east from california. Have you heard about this . Allman so, probably once a week, we get a call. Its usually some trooper back east, you know, at 3 00 in the morning who stopped a car for not having a taillight. Says, you wont believe it. You know, we got 35, 40 pounds. Alfonsi thats on the low end. Throughout the year, we spoke to highway patrols across the center of the country. They shared photos of hundreds of pounds of pot they have intercepted. This 300pound load was in missouri; this trailer in idaho carried 800 pounds; and 3,400 pounds were found in this haul in texas. Since prop64 was implemented, we were told by highway patrols in six states that they have seized up to three times more pot on their roads. Did this all happen too fast . Allman oh, my goodness. Of course it did. It happened way too fast. For the black market, its been a gold rush. Im not saying that anybody at the organizers of prop64 intended this to happen the way it happened. You know, they just wanted to decriminalize marijuana. But people have taken advantage. Alfonsi allman explained that californians have little appetite to prosecute marijuana crimes, so hes had to get creative to go after the black market. Allman if i took someone to in front of a jury for growing 1,000 plants illegally, no permits, no anything, i am telling you, there is no way in hell im going to get a conviction on cultivation of marijuana. Marijuana, on its face, is part of our social fabric. But if that same grower was stealing water and using pesticides and rodenticides and taking water from the river, that jurys going to hang them. Alfonsi to see that strategy at work, we went on a marijuana raid, where agents from the department of fish and wildlife were leading the way. They took us down a dusty, bumpy road deep in the Emerald Triangle. Their agents had been hiding in a forest for days, staking out an illegal grow. With their guns out, they went in. As cops questioned two workers, others went row by row chopping down 1,000 plants. Scientists checked for illegal pesticides and documented how water was being stolen from a creek. Those violations, which could result in fines up to 40,000 a day, may turn out to be the most effective weapon against black market growers. Allman who wouldve thought that when we write a search warrant and we go out and serve it, we would bring a biologist with us . Now its as important to us as bringing a gun. Gavin newsom the illegal grows now are manifesting, theyre getting bigger, theyre alfonsi california governor gavin newsom, who was a strong supporter of prop64, has said it could take seven years to get past the growing pains and stomp out the black market. Hes called in the National Guard to help by ordering units that were assisting the Border Patrol near mexico to move north to the Emerald Triangle, where casey oneill grows his pot. So what happens if the National Guard shows up and here come the helicopters descending on the hills of the Emerald Triangle . Oneill its the same as it ever was alfonsi what happens six months later . Oneill what happens the day after they leave . People replant. Alfonsi casey oneill may be right. Six weeks after that raid we went on, cops went back to the exact spot and found 1,100 brandnew marijuana plants. ticking wertheim in 1492, Christopher Columbus, of course, sailed the ocean blue. And on his journey home, he wrote a letter to his patrons, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of spain, describing his discovery of the new world, and in effect, asking for more money to make another trip. Columbus voyage marked one of the great plot points in history. Upon his return, his letter was printed and distributed throughout europe, making for blockbuster news. Columbus original handwritten letter, penned on the high seas, no longer exists, but some of the printed copies do. As we first reported last year, most are housed in prestigious libraries, and for centuries, thats where theyve remained that is, until about ten years ago, when authorities discovered some of these treasures had been stolen and replaced with forgeries. So began a modern kind of transatlantic quest, as investigators in the u. S. And europe worked to recover columbus missing missives and solve this most Unusual International mystery. If there is one library in the world youd think would be impervious to theft, this would be it. The Vatican Library in rome houses a vast and unrivaled collection of historic treasures. It is the popes library, home to manuscripts going back nearly 2,000 years. The library is closed to the public. Its a place for scholars only. But ambrogio piazonni, the vice prefect, invited us inside. It was here in 2011 that vatican officials first discovered that one of their prized items a columbus letter had somehow been stolen and replaced with a fake. How do you think this happened . Piazonni translated look, i do not know. I have no idea how and when it may have happened. Certainly it was an operation carried out as a proper theft. But i do not know when or how. Wertheim he is in good company. At the center of this mystery this eightpage letter, written at sea by Christopher Columbus more than 500 years ago. In it, he describes his First Impressions of the new world a wonderland, he writes, filled with rivers, gold and timid natives. When columbus letter arrived at the royal court in spain in 1493, it was promptly sent to rome, where it was translated into latin and printed, spreading the news of his extraordinary expedition. So this was big news . Columbus makes this voyage and suddenly, this is being disseminated . Jay dillon this is some of the biggest news ever. Wertheim jay dillon is a rare book dealer in new jersey. He ranks the columbus letter as one of the most Important Documents ever printed. Dillon this was one of the first bestsellers. It is probably the first contemporary account of anything to be published across europe. Wertheim today, only about 30 copies of this