U.S. Marijuana Production Weakens Mexican Cartels

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U.S. Marijuana Production Weakens Mexican Cartels
ARCATA, Calif. -- Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico.Illicit pot production in the United States has been increasing steadily for decades. But recent changes in state laws that allow the use and cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes are giving U.S. growers a competitive advantage, challenging the traditional dominance of the Mexican traffickers ... The shifting economics of the marijuana trade have broad implications for Mexico's war against the drug cartels, suggesting that market forces, as much as law enforcement, can extract a heavy price from criminal organizations. (October 7, 2009)
 
Now, to stay competitive, Mexican traffickers are improving their product and streamlining delivery. Well-organised Mexican cartels have also moved increasingly to cultivate marijuana on public land in the US. This gives them direct access to US markets, avoids the risk of seizure at the border and reduces transport costs.

The Mexican traffickers' illegal use of public land is a response to the dramatic increase in US production, authorities and growers say. In the northern woods of California, illegal immigrants hired by well-heeled Mexican bosses lay kilometres of plastic pipe and install oscillating sprinkler systems for clandestine fields that produce a cheaper, faster-growing ''commercial grade'' of marijuana. Eric Sligh, the editor and publisher of Grow magazine in Mendocino County, Northern California, said the Mexicans use a fast-growing variety and time their harvests to periods of low domestic production in the US.

After establishing sophisticated farming networks in California, Washington and Oregon, the Mexican traffickers are shifting operations eastwards to Michigan, Arkansas and North Carolina, federal agents say.

Like wily commodity traders, Mexican traffickers time their shipments to exploit growing cycles in the US. They warehouse tons of pot south of the border to ship north during periods when demand peaks and domestic supplies are scarce, Mexican anti-narcotics officials say.


In the national forests and public timberlands of Northern California, Mexican growers shoot at US law enforcement agents with growing frequency and use fertilisers and pesticides that pollute watersheds and start fires. A 36,000-hectare blaze in Los Padres National Forest in Southern California in August began on a marijuana farm run by Mexican traffickers, authorities say. The fields are so inaccessible that helicopters are needed to insert agents, who cut the plants with pruning shears, machetes and even chainsaws before flying them out to be destroyed.

This season, five teams from the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement in California have seized 4.2 million plants worth an estimated $US1.5 billion, a jump of 576 per cent since 2004.

Ralph Reyes, chief of operations for Mexico and Central America for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, said intelligence suggests that the big cartels are directly behind much of the marijuana growth that is taking place on public land.

''The casual consumer in the US - the kid or adult that smokes a joint - will never in their mind associate smoking that joint with the severing of people's heads in Mexico,'' he said.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/wor...-threat-to-mexican-cartels-20091011-gseo.html

Looks like the cartels are moving this way, how soon before we get the violence and murder like Mexico has?
 
Topspin must be smoking too much since he got the issue all wrong. Why do you think they call it "dope" anyway?
 
webbway said:
Now, to stay competitive, Mexican traffickers are improving their product and streamlining delivery. Well-organised Mexican cartels have also moved increasingly to cultivate marijuana on public land in the US. This gives them direct access to US markets, avoids the risk of seizure at the border and reduces transport costs.

The Mexican traffickers' illegal use of public land is a response to the dramatic increase in US production, authorities and growers say. In the northern woods of California, illegal immigrants hired by well-heeled Mexican bosses lay kilometres of plastic pipe and install oscillating sprinkler systems for clandestine fields that produce a cheaper, faster-growing ''commercial grade'' of marijuana. Eric Sligh, the editor and publisher of Grow magazine in Mendocino County, Northern California, said the Mexicans use a fast-growing variety and time their harvests to periods of low domestic production in the US.

After establishing sophisticated farming networks in California, Washington and Oregon, the Mexican traffickers are shifting operations eastwards to Michigan, Arkansas and North Carolina, federal agents say.

Like wily commodity traders, Mexican traffickers time their shipments to exploit growing cycles in the US. They warehouse tons of pot south of the border to ship north during periods when demand peaks and domestic supplies are scarce, Mexican anti-narcotics officials say.


In the national forests and public timberlands of Northern California, Mexican growers shoot at US law enforcement agents with growing frequency and use fertilisers and pesticides that pollute watersheds and start fires. A 36,000-hectare blaze in Los Padres National Forest in Southern California in August began on a marijuana farm run by Mexican traffickers, authorities say. The fields are so inaccessible that helicopters are needed to insert agents, who cut the plants with pruning shears, machetes and even chainsaws before flying them out to be destroyed.

This season, five teams from the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement in California have seized 4.2 million plants worth an estimated $US1.5 billion, a jump of 576 per cent since 2004.

Ralph Reyes, chief of operations for Mexico and Central America for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, said intelligence suggests that the big cartels are directly behind much of the marijuana growth that is taking place on public land.

''The casual consumer in the US - the kid or adult that smokes a joint - will never in their mind associate smoking that joint with the severing of people's heads in Mexico,'' he said.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/wor...-threat-to-mexican-cartels-20091011-gseo.html

Looks like the cartels are moving this way, how soon before we get the violence and murder like Mexico has?
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it'll stop as soon as you stop the drug wars, price it lower and have mom and pops do it and the cartells go back to profitable illegal hard drugs.
 
Topspin said:
it'll stop as soon as you stop the drug wars, price it lower and have mom and pops do it and the cartells go back to profitable illegal hard drugs.
Click to expand...


:chicken:

Ask your fearless leader and the rest of the democrats in DC, they are running the show.
 
Topspin said:
U.S. Marijuana Production Weakens Mexican Cartels
ARCATA, Calif. -- Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico.Illicit pot production in the United States has been increasing steadily for decades. But recent changes in state laws that allow the use and cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes are giving U.S. growers a competitive advantage, challenging the traditional dominance of the Mexican traffickers ... The shifting economics of the marijuana trade have broad implications for Mexico's war against the drug cartels, suggesting that market forces, as much as law enforcement, can extract a heavy price from criminal organizations. (October 7, 2009)
Click to expand...

legalize, tax and regulate the stuff like alcohol and tobacco...of course when people can grow their own it will be tougher, remember the whiskey rebellion
 
DonQuixote said:
legalize, tax and regulate the stuff like alcohol and tobacco...of course when people can grow their own it will be tougher, remember the whiskey rebellion
Click to expand...
That's why it will never be legalized, because unlike making whiskey, beer, wine or cigarettes that take a lot of skill and effort to make, weed grows like a. well, weed, then merely has to be harvested, dried out and stuffed into a pipe.

So all this talk about health impacts, addiction, drug crime and the like is pure bullshit to hide the real issue, which is that the government knows it can't tax it and will therefore lose money if they legalize it.
 
Southern Man said:
That's why it will never be legalized, because unlike making whiskey, beer, wine or cigarettes that take a lot of skill and effort to make, weed grows like a. well, weed, then merely has to be harvested, dried out and stuffed into a pipe.
So all this talk about health impacts, addiction, drug crime and the like is pure bullshit to hide the real issue, which is that the government knows it can't tax it and will therefore lose money if they legalize it.
Click to expand...

The underlined part is true.

The bolded part is not as true. While anyone can grow marijuana, good marijuana, that is to say, quality marijuana with a good effect can not just be grown. One has to take care of the plants, remove the males from the females, make sure it gets water, but not too much and not too little. Marijuana from places like Oregon and Humboldt county in California has methodically cultivated with strong strains kept and weak strains discarded. Some of the stronger strains have been grafted together to produce even better stuff. If it was legal, it would be cheap and MOST smokers would not grow it because they could not get the same high per gram that established growers do. There would be high demand for legal marijuana and high supply from established growers driving the prices down and taking illegal growing in forests out of production. THe same thing happened with Alcohol. After prohibition went away bathtub gin went away and only good distillers and brewers remained selling a good product for a reasonable price, and the mob had to get out of the booze biz.
 
Socrtease said:
The underlined part is true.

The bolded part is not as true. While anyone can grow marijuana, good marijuana, that is to say, quality marijuana with a good effect can not just be grown. One has to take care of the plants, remove the males from the females, make sure it gets water, but not too much and not too little. Marijuana from places like Oregon and Humboldt county in California has methodically cultivated with strong strains kept and weak strains discarded. Some of the stronger strains have been grafted together to produce even better stuff. If it was legal, it would be cheap and MOST smokers would not grow it because they could not get the same high per gram that established growers do. There would be high demand for legal marijuana and high supply from established growers driving the prices down and taking illegal growing in forests out of production. THe same thing happened with Alcohol. After prohibition went away bathtub gin went away and only good distillers and brewers remained selling a good product for a reasonable price, and the mob had to get out of the booze biz.
Click to expand...

Why can the government not tax it?
 
Socrtease said:
The underlined part is true.

The bolded part is not as true. While anyone can grow marijuana, good marijuana, that is to say, quality marijuana with a good effect can not just be grown. One has to take care of the plants, remove the males from the females, make sure it gets water, but not too much and not too little. Marijuana from places like Oregon and Humboldt county in California has methodically cultivated with strong strains kept and weak strains discarded. Some of the stronger strains have been grafted together to produce even better stuff. If it was legal, it would be cheap and MOST smokers would not grow it because they could not get the same high per gram that established growers do. There would be high demand for legal marijuana and high supply from established growers driving the prices down and taking illegal growing in forests out of production. THe same thing happened with Alcohol. After prohibition went away bathtub gin went away and only good distillers and brewers remained selling a good product for a reasonable price, and the mob had to get out of the booze biz.
Click to expand...

You bring up good points but the same could be said for backyard tomatoes, except of course that back yard tomatoes are always far superior to store-bought.
 
Jarod said:
Why can the government not tax it?
Click to expand...
Actually I think they can, like I said, I think there would only be producers of quality marijuana out there and the government could tax it. A production tax on the final weight of the dried product.
 
Socrtease said:
Actually I think they can, like I said, I think there would only be producers of quality marijuana out there and the government could tax it. A production tax on the final weight of the dried product.
Click to expand...

Yup, I agree, the THC content could also be regulated. President Obama has made a baby step in the correct direction. Id love to grow a weak crop in my back yard...!
 
Socrtease said:
Actually I think they can, like I said, I think there would only be producers of quality marijuana out there and the government could tax it. A production tax on the final weight of the dried product.
Click to expand...

Jarod said:
Yup, I agree, the THC content could also be regulated. President Obama has made a baby step in the correct direction. Id love to grow a weak crop in my back yard...!
Click to expand...

Once you regulate the THC content Socrtease's argument goes out the window. Pppfffttt....
 
Southern Man said:
That's why it will never be legalized, because unlike making whiskey, beer, wine or cigarettes that take a lot of skill and effort to make, weed grows like a. well, weed, then merely has to be harvested, dried out and stuffed into a pipe.

So all this talk about health impacts, addiction, drug crime and the like is pure bullshit to hide the real issue, which is that the government knows it can't tax it and will therefore lose money if they legalize it.
Click to expand...

oat, there will always be people that do not want to spend the time and energy to grow their own

now me, i have three acres available...
 
webbway said:
''The casual consumer in the US - the kid or adult that smokes a joint - will never in their mind associate smoking that joint with the severing of people's heads in Mexico,'' he said.
Click to expand...

That's on the drug warriors, not drug users. There is no connection between smoking a joint and someone getting decapitated in Mexico.
 
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