[5] In 1984, Humboldt residents filed a federal lawsuit claiming they had been subject to illegal surveillance by U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft deployed by the California-based multiagency task force started the year prior, the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting.

The punk rock band was named for the fire lookout at Iron Peak in Mendocino County, which led local marijuana growers to threaten to burn down Livermore's house for bringing too much publicity to their hilly isolated region of the Emerald Triangle near Spyrock.

Homegrown is a 1998 movie starring Billy Bob Thornton that follows marijuana growers in an unspecific area of the Emerald Triangle, most likely northern Mendocino County.

On the TV show Lost, during flashback scenes in the episode "Further Instructions", John Locke picks up a hitchhiker who happens to be an undercover police officer on State Route 36 and brings him back to a farm near Bridgeville, where they grow marijuana in a greenhouse.

[16] In "Object Impermanence", an episode of Showtime's Weeds, Nancy Botwin drives to Heylia James' boobytrapped outdoor marijuana grow in Humboldt County.

[20] The 2020 film Freeland is about a longtime Humboldt County marijuana grower, played by Krisha Fairchild, growing illegally despite the availability of the legal market.

[21] The 2021 documentary Lady Buds, produced by Gravitas Ventures, about women who work in the marijuana industry in Northern California, is being developed into a scripted comedy feature film and a non-scripted series.

[23] The 2021 crime podcast Dark Woods, produced by Dick Wolf and set in Humboldt County that includes a trespass marijuana grow on public land, is currently being developed by Universal Television for a TV adaptation.