Consequences of Cannabis Worsen
ProPublica took a break from partisan attacks on the US Supreme Court to publish a significant story: Chinese criminal gangs have taken over America's marijuana industry. An open border helped.
We should legalize Marijuana (or Cannabis), they told us, first for "medical" use and now for recreational use. What could go wrong, we keep being asked? Legalizing and regulating its use will bring black markets into the open for an essentially “harmless” commodity, reduce use by children, and rid ourselves of nefarious characters. Think of all the tax revenue politicians are told by the robust cannabis industry, much of which is increasingly controlled or owned by Big Tobacco. It’s now a $21.7 billion industry and growing. And that’s just in the US. It’s big in Canada, too, where it’s been legalized for recreational use.
So much less harmful than alcohol, we’re told, as Big Cannabis pays for studies to back such claims, just like the tobacco industry did in the 1950s for cigarettes. Never mind that Cannabis consumption is leading to spikes in mental health “episodes” and is increasingly linked to suicides. Marijuana also stays in your system longer than alcohol - days versus hours. It makes warehouse owners and managers nervous about their forklift operators, especially on Monday mornings after the weekend.
Voters are okay with it, except in North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, where ballot initiatives failed in 2022. Oklahoma, in particular, has exposed a significant problem with even deregulating marijuana's production and distribution, which they voted to do in 2018. The consequences may have contributed to the recreational ballot initiatives' overwhelming rejection four years later. Read on.
Other states—31 in total, many through ballot initiatives— have embraced full legalization, and dispensaries in places like Maryland are popping up like gas stations. Literally, in some cases.
By the way, most Cannabis consumption - the kind that includes THC, the compound that makes you “high” - is not via smoking. It’s in what you eat, like gummy bears and other compounds used in edibles. The food and wine industry is looking into how to incorporate THC into its products, although federal law currently is in the way. For now. The House in 2020 passed the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act when Democrats controlled the House and would have removed Marijuana and THC from the Controlled Substances Act. Then-US Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) authored the Senate companion bill.
Maryland voters overwhelmingly approved “Question 4” in 2022 and became the latest state to go the "full Colorado" - the first state in the nation to fully legalize it 11 years ago. It’s a confusing picture, but in all, some 31 states have fully legalized marijuana possession and consumption for personal use, including decriminalization. Some states, including Virginia, have yet to make it into the end zone by legalizing sales and distribution systems. But Virginia Democrats are pushing hard against GOP Governor Glenn Youngkin’s disinterest and veto threats.
The media has largely ignored the adverse health and safety consequences of marijuana legalization in Colorado as measured by the Rocky Mountain High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (RMHIDTA), which I've posted previously but is worth revisiting. One in five Colorado traffic fatalities involves a driver testing positive for marijuana.
As noted earlier, arguments for a “well-regulated” system for legalized Cannabis have been both the elimination of “black market” sales and curbing consumption by youth (under the age of 18 or 21, depending on the state). How’s that working out? Colorado ranks 7th in the nation for marijuana consumption by 12 to 17-year-olds and third for everyone 12 and older. And illegal marijuana shipment seizures have skyrocketed. Just read the report.
And speaking of tax revenue, marijuana taxes generate almost one percent of Colorado’s state budget, not including the cost of regulating it. Example: According to this Forbes Magazine report, some $25 million since 2012 has gone to fund all-day kindergarten programs, but Denver alone spent $29 million from 2014-19 on regulation and enforcement.
Forbes: “While marijuana tax dollars fund school maintenance and construction, they do not address Colorado’s per pupil funding ranking. Practically none of these tax dollars goes to school operating budgets, including teacher salaries, books, and school supplies.”
Oklahoma legalized the growth of marijuana, and "medical marijuana" sales centers are more pervasive in the Sooner state than dispensaries are in California. The result is that criminal Chinese gangs with connections to Latin American drug cartels have taken over.
It makes Paramount’s “Tulsa King” series, starring Sylvester Stallone as a New York mafia capo who takes over an Oklahoma dispensary to establish his “territory,” look like a neighborhood lemonade stand operation. Here are a few snippets from ProPublica’s investigation and reporting, Organized Crime Is Dominating America’s Illegal Marijuana Market. It’s a must-read.
From California to Maine, Chinese organized crime has come to dominate much of the nation’s illicit marijuana trade, an investigation by ProPublica and The Frontier has found. Along with the explosive growth of this criminal industry, the gangsters have unleashed lawlessness: violence, drug trafficking, money laundering, gambling, bribery, document fraud, bank fraud, environmental damage and theft of water and electricity.
Chinese organized crime “has taken over marijuana in Oklahoma and the United States,” said Donnie Anderson, the director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, in an interview.
Among the victims are thousands of Chinese immigrants, many of them smuggled across the Mexican border to toil in often abusive conditions at farms ringed by fences, surveillance cameras and guards with guns and machetes. A grim offshoot of this indentured servitude: Traffickers force Chinese immigrant women into prostitution for the bosses of the agricultural workforce.
This is another consequence of our open southern border. Thanks, Joe Biden. By the way, where’s the FBI? They’re involved, but they appear to have other priorities.
In 2018, the mafias set their sights on Oklahoma when the state’s voters approved a ballot measure that legalized the cultivation and sale of marijuana for medicinal purposes. The law did not limit the number of dispensaries or growing operations – known in the industry simply as “grows.” It requires marijuana businesses to have majority owners who have lived in the state for two years, and it bars shipping the product across state lines. But limited enforcement enabled out-of-state investors to recruit illegal “straw owners” and to traffic weed clandestinely across the country. And land was cheap. In this wide-open atmosphere, the industry grew at breakneck speed and, regulators say, is now second only to the oil and gas industry in the state.
And it’s not just Oklahoma.
The victims of another scam were law-abiding Asian Americans. Cybercriminals manipulated the computer system of the Texas Department of Public Safety to obtain thousands of driver’s licenses destined for Asian Americans, tricking authorities into mailing the licenses to marijuana farms in neighboring Oklahoma. The suspects used the licenses for fraudulent purchases or sold them on the underground market. Police arrested the accused mastermind in New York and extradited him to Texas last April to stand trial.
This awesome research needs to be shared widely with elected leaders nationwide.
I don't care how unhealthy marijuana is. If an adult wants to use it, that's the adult's decision. (Not children, of course.)
How many lives were destroyed, decade after decade, by arrests for using marijuana? A: Far too many.
And no, I never used the stuff myself. I certainly hope none of my family would use it. I'm not an old hippie. I'm not a blue state Democrat.
Citizens should have the right to do wrong if they're not hurting anyone else.
Please read "The Case for Legalizing Drugs," by Richard L. Miller.