Posted on 12/03/2014 12:03:43 PM PST by ConservingFreedom
Made-in-America marijuana is on a roll. More than half the states have now voted to permit pot for recreational or medical use, most recently Oregon and Alaska. That number also includes the District of Columbia. As a result, Americans appear to be buying more domestic marijuana, which in turn is undercutting growers and cartels in Mexico.
"Two or three years ago, a kilogram [2.2 pounds] of marijuana was worth $60 to $90," says Nabor, a 24-year-old pot grower in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa. "But now they're paying us $30 to $40 a kilo. It's a big difference. If the U.S. continues to legalize pot, they'll run us into the ground."
Nabor declines to give his surname because his crop is illegal. The interview takes place on a hillside outside Culiacan, Sinaloa, located in Mexico's marijuana heartland. We stand next to a field of knee-high cannabis plants, their serrated leaves quivering in a warm Pacific breeze. The plot is on communal land next to rows of edible nopal cactus.
He kneels and proudly shows me the resinous buds on the short, stocky plants. This strain, called Chronic, is a favorite among growers for its easy cultivation, fast flowering and mood-lifting high. Nabor, who says he has grown marijuana since he was 14, says the plants do not belong to him.
"My patrón pays me $150 a month, but I have to plant it exactly the way he wants," he says. "He provides the water pump, gasoline, irrigation hoses, fertilizer, everything."
An Army Of Small-Scale Growers
There's an image of Mexican traffickers with shiny pickups, fancy boots and shapely girlfriends. But Nabor says most people who grow marijuana for the Sinaloa cartel are just campesinos like him.
He drives a motorcycle, and supports a wife and two kids. He says he grows pot to supplement his other work, which consists of collecting firewood and raising cactus. He says everybody plants a little marijuana here. Marijuana plants in Culiacan, Sinaloa, in Mexico's marijuana heartland. Prices are about half of what they were a few years ago, according to some growers.
"This is dangerous work to cultivate it and to sell it. If the army comes, you have to run or they'll grab you. Look here, we're only getting $40 a kilo. The day we get $20 a kilo, it will get to the point that we just won't plant marijuana anymore."
The slumping economics of Mexican marijuana was not unexpected.
Two years ago, the Mexican Institute of Competitiveness, in a study titled "If Our Neighbors Legalize," predicted the drug cartels would see their cannabis profits plummet 22 to 30 percent if the United States continued to decriminalize marijuana.
At one time, virtually all the weed smoked in the States, from Acapulco Gold to Colombian Red, came from south of the border.
Not anymore.
"We're still seeing marijuana. But it's almost all the homegrown stuff here from the States and from Canada. It's just not the compressed marijuana from Mexico that we see," says Lt. David Socha, of the Austin Police Department narcotics section.
Socha's observation is confirmed by the venerable journal of the marijuana culture, High Times Magazine.
"American pot smokers prefer American domestically grown marijuana to Mexican grown marijuana. We've seen a ton of evidence of this in the last decade or so," says Daniel Vinkovetsky, who writes under the pen name Danny Danko. He is senior cultivation editor at High Times and author of The Official High Times Field Guide to Marijuana Strains.
U.S. domestic marijuana, some of it cultivated in high-tech greenhouses, is three or four times more expensive than Mexican marijuana. Vinkovetsky says prices for Mexican weed continue to slide because it's so much weaker.
He says American cannabis typically has 10 to 20 percent THC — the ingredient that makes a person high — whereas the THC content of so-called Mexican brickweed is typically 3 to 8 percent.
"Mexican marijuana is considered to be of poor quality generally because it's grown in bulk, outdoors; it's typically dried but not really cured, which is something we do here in the U.S. with connoisseur-quality cannabis," he says. "And it's also bricked up, meaning that it's compressed, for sale and packaging and in order to get it over the border efficiently."
Reversing The Flow
To service the U.S. market, police agencies report some Mexican crime groups grow marijuana in public lands in the West.
And there's a new intriguing development.
DEA spokesman Lawrence Payne tells NPR that Sinaloa operatives in the United States are reportedly buying high-potency American marijuana in Colorado and smuggling it back into Mexico for sale to high-paying customers.
"It makes sense," Payne says. "We know the cartels are already smuggling cash into Mexico. If you can buy some really high-quality weed here, why not smuggle it south, too, and sell it at a premium?"
The big question is whether the loss of market share is actually hurting the violent Mexican drug mafias.
"The Sinaloa cartel has demonstrated in many instances that it can adapt. I think it's in a process of redefinition toward marijuana," says Javier Valdez, a respected journalist and author who writes books on the narcoculture in Sinaloa.
Valdez says he's heard through the grapevine that marijuana planting has dropped 30 percent in the mountains of Sinaloa. But he says the Sinaloa cartel is old school — it sticks to drugs, even as other cartels, such as the Zetas of Tamaulipas state, have branched out into kidnapping and extortion.
"I believe that now, because of the changes they're having to make because of marijuana legalization in the U.S., the cartel is pushing more cocaine, meth and heroin. They're diversifying," Valdez says.
Back in the hills above Culiacan, Nabor is asked, if prices for marijuana continue declining, what will he do?
"My dream is to get a good job, a regular job," he says, "where I don't have to do such dangerous work; a job that pays me a living wage."
When the interview is over, and the recorder is turned off, and we're about to drive back to the highway, Nabor quietly says he thinks he's done with marijuana. He's considering planting opium poppies, because that's where the market is going.
not only the mark-up, but the risks made pot so expensive. If you decriminalize it the drug cartels lose money and power- the sky high cost is because of the risks. You can grow it for free in a house pot, its so easy its ridiculous.
when i was a kid it was $5 a nickel-bag (1/4 oz) now it is like $100 or something ridiculous (don’t know, haven’t bought it in 20 years)
I am FOR decriminalization- as an ex smoker I know there are some good and bad to it.
If you smoke too much it is VERY BAD for you, just like if you drink too much.
If you smoke a little it cures insomnia, nausea, and stops your hair from falling out, among other things. It does not make you violent like alcohol.
Also, God made pot plants... must serve a purpose
No stems no seeds that you don’t need..............
And why is "Colorado Lawmakers Approve Plan for Pot Banking" supposed to be a bad thing?
When I was stationed in Hawaii I watched a news segment about a raid on a pot farm. Officers were cutting down pot plants. When they were tossed on a fire there wasn’t a single bud.
Here in the Hampton Roads area a very strong strain is grown. It must cost the Mexicans a pile.
Thanks to the Harrison Act and Prohibition, we now live in a drug- and alcohol-free society. Today's man functions without chemical crutches to get him through the day.Domestic Background
In the 1800s opiates and cocaine were mostly unregulated drugs. In the 1890s the Sears & Roebuck catalogue, which was distributed to millions of Americans homes, offered a syringe and a small amount of cocaine for $1.50.[4]
At the beginning of the 20th century, cocaine began to be linked to crime. In 1900, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an editorial stating, "Negroes in the South are reported as being addicted to a new form of vice – that of 'cocaine sniffing' or the 'coke habit.'" Some newspapers later claimed cocaine use caused blacks to rape white women and was improving their pistol marksmanship. Chinese immigrants were blamed for importing the opium-smoking habit to the U.S. The 1903 blue-ribbon citizens' panel, the Committee on the Acquirement of the Drug Habit, concluded, "If the Chinaman cannot get along without his dope we can get along without him."
Theodore Roosevelt appointed Dr. Hamilton Wright as the first Opium Commissioner of the United States in 1908. In 1909, Wright attended the International Opium Commission in Shanghai as the American delegates. He was accompanied by Charles Henry Brent, the Episcopal Bishop. On March 12, 1911, Dr. Wright was quoted in as follows in an article in the New York Times: "Of all the nations of the world, the United States consumes most habit-forming drugs per capita. Opium, the most pernicious drug known to humanity, is surrounded, in this country, with far fewer safeguards than any other nation in Europe fences it with."[5] Wright further claimed that "it has been authoritatively stated that cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the negroes of the South and other sections of the country," though he failed to mention specifically which authorities had stated that, and did not provide any evidence for his claim.[6] Wright also stated that "one of the most unfortunate phases of smoking opium in this country is the large number of women who have become involved and were living as common-law wives or cohabitating with Chinese in the Chinatowns of our various cities".[7][8]
Opium usage had begun to decline by 1914 after rising dramatically in the post Civil War Era, peaking at around one-half million pounds per year in 1896.[9] Demand gradually declined thereafter in response to mounting public concern, local and state regulations, and the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, which required labeling of patent medicines that contained opiates, cocaine, alcohol, cannabis and other intoxicants.[10] As of 1911, an estimated one U.S. citizen in 400 (0.25%) was addicted to some form of opium.[5] The opium addicts were mostly women who were prescribed and dispensed legal opiates by physicians and pharmacist for ”female problems,” probably mostly pain at menstruation, or white men and Chinese at the Opium dens. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of these addicts were women.[11] By 1914, forty-six states had regulations on cocaine and twenty-nine states had laws against opium, morphine, and heroin.[4][8][12][13]
Several authors have argued that the debate was merely to regulate trade and collect a tax. However, the committee report[14] prior to the debate on the house floor and the debate itself, discussed the rise of opiate use in the United States. Harrison stated that "The purpose of this Bill can hardly be said to raise revenue, because it prohibits the importation of something upon which we have hitherto collected revenue." Later Harrison stated, "We are not attempting to collect revenue, but regulate commerce." House representative Thomas Sisson stated, "The purpose of this bill—and we are all in sympathy with it—is to prevent the use of opium in the United States, destructive as it is to human happiness and human life."[15]
The drafters played on fears of “drug-crazed, sex-mad negroes” and made references to Negroes under the influence of drugs murdering whites, degenerate Mexicans smoking marijuana, and “Chinamen” seducing white women with drugs.[16][17] Dr. Hamilton Wright, testified at a hearing for the Harrison Act. Wright alleged that drugs made blacks uncontrollable, gave them superhuman powers and caused them to rebel against white authority. Dr. Christopher Koch of the State Pharmacy Board of Pennsylvania testified that "Most of the attacks upon the white women of the South are the direct result of a cocaine-crazed Negro brain".[4]
Before the Act was passed, on February 8, 1914, The New York Times published an article entitled "Negro Cocaine 'Fiends' Are New Southern Menace: Murder and Insanity Increasing Among Lower-Class Blacks" by Edward Huntington Williams, which reported that Southern sheriffs had increased the caliber of their weapons from .32 to .38 to bring down Negroes under the effect of cocaine.[4][8][12]
Despite the extreme racialization of the issue that took place in the buildup to the Act's passage, the contemporary research on the subject indicated that black Americans were in fact using cocaine and opium at much lower rates than white Americans.[18]
“My dream is to get a good job, a regular job,” he says,...Gee Whiz Pedro!...I really feel for your third world ass!
Yeah, the term “Drug Cartels” is just an easy cop out. They’re really just mafia style organized crime and will continue to do whatever it takes to make money.
He’s considering planting opium poppies, because that’s where the market is going...Really? What crap! Who gives a rats ass?
The big government types spit on our Constitution decades ago when they decided that Dc had the right to tell people all across the country what plants they could grow and smoke. Then came the even more anti-Constitutionalist “War on Drugs”, which resulted in a virtual police state. Now, pro-criminalization types are against fixing that mistake because “marijuana has always been illegal and we’ll all die if that changes”, demonstrating the principle that conservatives of today often are only defending the left-wing policies of yesterday.
This can’t be true! FReeper drug warriors have assured us that legalizing marijuana would just lead to the cartels taking over U.S. production.
/sarc
Once the cigarette companies enter the pot market, the Liberals will quickly change and again be against legalization of pot.
In a show of good faith, Congress will allocate a few billion dollars to help re-train them for some occupation they can use instead of selling drugs... perhaps bank robbery, hijacking or some other skill.
But the genie will be out of the bottle then.
“Mexicans will either undercut the price of legal (taxed) weed...”
This is not really possible, since the Mexican product is not of comparable quality to the American product. It’s like saying that Yugo could undercut BMW if it just lowered the price enough.
Move to Seattle.
Wow, are you getting ripped off, Nabor.
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