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Drug trafficking warehouse
When domestic marijuana becomes legal, what happens to the black market of illegally imported weed? The answer has been a question mark for decades simply for lack of real-world attempts to legalize cannabis. Opponents of legalization prophesied that the black market would flourish because the drug there, free from taxation and the costs inherent to running a licit business, would always be cheaper than legal weed. For the first time, the federal government released information on the true fate of the black market in a country where most states have some form of legal pot.
“In U.S. markets, Mexican marijuana has largely been supplanted by domestic-produced marijuana,” one can read in the newest report by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), in the first-ever admission that marijuana legalization plainly works. “The national landscape continues to evolve as states enact voter referenda and legislation regarding the possession, use, and cultivation of marijuana and its associated products,” the report continues, clearly indicating the causal relationship between legalization and the quiet death of the black market.
Reasons why illicit imported marijuana is failing to attract American consumers are numerous, but convenience is a leading factor. To get illegal imported weed, one needs access to a drug dealer, which eliminates a large pool of potential customers, in particular middle-aged and older Americans. These people might be curious and willing to purchase a legal marijuana-infused product at a local store but not willing to seek out what could be a dangerous transaction with a criminal.
A Gallup survey shows that only one-third of Americans had tried marijuana 10 years ago, and now, after a decade of successful legalization movements, half of the population has tried it. By Gallup’s numbers, the number of Americans born before 1946, whom they call “traditionalists”, who have tried marijuana at least once doubled between 2015 and 2021. It is safe to assume most of these people would never have tried weed if it were still illegal in their state.
The importance of safety cannot be understated, either. Most people are averse to committing crimes. Knowing that half-a-million Americans are arrested every single year for minor, non-violent possession of marijuana, many people would be afraid of being found in possession of the drug, even if they personally have no problem with the idea of being high. Additionally, the marijuana itself, the product being ingested, is far safer when purchased at a legal retail location rather from than a trafficker with no oversight and with a large incentive to temper the marijuana for profit.
The Story Told by Border Patrol Data
Since the mid-1900s, when the all-American crop cannabis was nicknamed “marihuana” by Prohibition enforcers to artificially associate it with Mexicans and use racial fears to ban it, marijuana has been unfairly associated with Mexico. It should not come as a surprise when, out of the two countries bordering the mainland United States, only the less-white southern neighbor is a source of fear and wild rumors surrounding the border. Former President Donald Trump even made it a central campaign promise, promising to build a great wall on the Mexican border to interrupt, among other things, the influx of drugs into the U.S., mainly marijuana.
Drug seizure data from the United States Customs and Border Protection agency was providing similar information to what the DEA now admits, although Border Protection did not point out the legalization movement as the explicit cause of it. Marijuana is, by far, the most commonly seized substance crossing into the country illegally. In 2014, there were almost two million pounds of marijuana seized by border patrol agents. That same year, all the other substances combined did not total 10,000 pounds. In 2020, that number was down from two million pounds to just 250,000 pounds of marijuana.
Between October 2021 and April 2022, there were barely more than 75,000 pounds of marijuana seized at the border, making FY2022 the least active year on record in terms of illegal marijuana entering the United States. But at the same time, other drugs have been gaining traction. Methamphetamine, for instance, represented a very small percentage of drug seizures in the past, with just 4,000 pounds of it seized in 2014. In 2021, there were more than 190,000 pounds of meth caught by the border patrol.
More seriously, neither fentanyl (a synthetic opioid) nor khat (a stimulant, chewable plant) were even counted by the DEA in previous years because the import of both substances was extremely rare. Now, there has been more khat seized at the border in 2022 than marijuana. In 2021, border patrol caught more than 200,000 pounds of illicit khat. Fentanyl used to be extremely difficult to create, but technological improvement made its manufacture easy and cheap enough to introduce tens of thousands of pounds of it in the U.S. every year. While fentanyl doesn’t seem like a big deal in terms of weight, that is because it is deadly at minuscule doses. The DEA says that fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin, and they claim that overdose deaths linked to it were multiplied by 12 between 2013 and 2019.
As marijuana trafficking was divided by 10 in as many years, criminal organizations relying on drug revenue were literally starved to the brink of collapse thanks to marijuana legalization in the U.S. The marijuana that is still being carried across the border nowadays is destined to the few states—among whom is Wisconsin—who still refuse to legalize cannabis. The reason why fentanyl, meth and khat are becoming central products trafficked by criminal organizations is the need for new avenues of income, now that marijuana has become all but unprofitable.
In fact, Wisconsin’s own Rep. Glenn Grothman, crowned “worst politician in Wisconsin” by marijuana activist organization NORML, has come forward with the very same conclusion. “As marijuana becomes legalized in the country, it is no longer profitable to bring marijuana across the southern border,” Rep. Grothman said in an address to Congress. “Well, if the Mexican drug cartels cannot make money selling marijuana or bringing marijuana across the border, how are they going to make it up? They are going to make it up by bringing more and more dangerous drugs—meth, cocaine, heroin, but above all, fentanyl. They are going to bring more and more fentanyl across the southern border.”
That is, indeed, true. But, unlike what Grothman wants, the solution is not to keep marijuana illegal in order to keep the cartels wealthy and well-fed. Now that these organizations have fully developed their ability to manufacture their own fentanyl, they will keep sending it to the U.S., even if marijuana were somehow re-criminalized. Instead, as we have proved with the marijuana legalization experiment, carefully crafted laws can and do starve drug traffickers. In 2021, marijuana was still the top drug trafficked across the southern border, although it’s second to khat in 2022 so far. By federally legalizing marijuana, the U.S. would deal a major hit to drug traffickers; and by extending a science-based, fact-minded, reform approach to other drugs, in particular khat, we could collectively bring criminal organizations to their knees.