Domestic Marijuana Production Cutting Cartel Profits
As reported on the front page of today’s Washington Post, domestic marijuana production is cutting into the bottom line of Mexican drug cartels while decades of police enforcement have failed to curb their growth.
The article states, “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.”
Now imagine for a moment if we encouraged this trend, rather than fought it. If the U.S. adopted new policies giving states the option to create legally regulated domestic markets for marijuana, we could go a long way toward eliminating the violence and corruption along our southern border entirely — and in the 230 American cities in which the cartels operate.
Under a legal and regulated system, the marijuana market — which is already thriving — would be safer, contribute billions to the American economy, and free up billions more in law enforcement resources.
Click here to read the article in today’s Washington Post.
Tagged with: Cartels and Mexico and Washington Post by the author
36 comments
Very encouraging…thanks for the post!
Medical Marijuana: Cutting violence and helping sick. Two birds, one stoner.
But for real, another step in the right direction.
As these mom-and-pop operations flourish, what will the mj market in America look like in 2020? Any thoughts?
I have been saying this for years. I said years ago that if we could grow our own the cartels make nothing. Now lets go a little further, if we was all to grow a couple of plants no one makes a profit. The ideal way is to be able to grow our own and if we have the need a person could help out a friend with a small donation.
About time we got a well written article out of the mainstream media.
Vaporizer in lieu of Pfizer!!!!!! This article from WaPo is common knowledge throughout the marijuana community….. at least more people are catching on
“”To those who enact unjust policies are as good as dead; those who are always instituting unfair regulations to keep the poor from getting fair treatment, and deprive the oppressed among My people of justice, So that they can STEAL WHAT WIDOWS OWN, AND LOOT WHAT BELONGS TO ORPHANS. What will you do on judgement day, when destruction arrives from a distant place? To whom will you run for help ? Where will you leave your wealth? [Isaiah 10:1-3]
Well no duh! How long have we reformists been saying this? FFS government…get a freakin clue!
Being able to make your own choices is true freedom. Keep up the fight.
Yeah man, I digg this. We grow a little, smoke a little, and share a little with our friends. If we can all do this, bye bye bad drug dealers. I hate dealers. They’re all shady man. And if you don’t got the setup to grow, you’re at their mercy. It sucks. I’m sure most of you know. High prices. shwag shit. and if it’s sort of dank you’re paying throught the roof with some talk like “yeah man this shit is the cronic 100%”. I say down with the dealers, and upward and onward with homegrown. I would grow, but I’m just too damn paranoid I’d get caught. It’s just not worth having your life turned upside down for. I hate dealers!
Ben #7
That’s right Ben. Throw the Good Book at ‘em!
#10
I agree with all your points.
At the very least, medical marijuana is a great stepping stone to eventual, full blown legalization. It’s just a matter of time and lots of it.
Tell ya what folks. If inflation hits hard core or other unforseen events happen that causes the economy to tank worse than it has, then what will our wonderful leaders do? Print more money just to keep this lie going? Most likely, but the tax payers will be freaking.
Stop all the spending. When our bank account is empty, we dont have jobs, cant pay any taxes. Its game over for drug war. Are we going to allow our government to put this drug war debt on our kids. What good is that going to do for them? We are already paying China 500million a day just in interset alone. What the fuck people ? How can we keep letting these crooks ruin us like this? I vote no confidence in our governmewnt leaders.
just out of curiosity… if ALL the cotten was burned, destroyed, voprized, ect… till none was left, then what? no money, no bonds, no up, middle, or low class, no jail, its invigurating ponder the thought of letting little viliges an colonys govern themself with reason, no punishment. murderers; murdered,
rapists; raped. democracy? i still dont see it. there is proof, lagitimet proof that americans want merijuana legal. so why are we being denied are constitutional rights? love to all the fighter, hate to all the flyers. peace
MPP your doing a fantastic job! Now stop supporting a ban on individual growers in lew of “Non-Profit Dispensaries” that charge sick people $420.00 an ounce for their Medical Marijuana. 500 Patients at $420.00 a week = $10,920,000.00 per year. This doesn’t seem very “Non- Profit” to me. Remember “SICKO”!!! MPP I love what you stand for. DO THE RIGHT THINK!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!
Individual growers are doing their part to put pressure on the drug cartels. Don’t take us out of the equation!!
nice to hear, which congress rep. is going to step up to the plate and get cannabis rescheduled? the quality and source of supply is dangerous when dealing with a black market product. Cannabis needs regulation for safe means of consumption by the public. Our government needs to do this for the people. we demand it!
Where theres big money…theres corruption.
CORRUPTOIN: A disease that spares no one.
I find it interesting that our leaders what to give us government health care.
Lets see. A wheelchair on the regular market costs bout 800$.
Medicare (our taxes) pays bout 1500$.
A power chair in open market costs bout 1500 -1800$
medicare pays bout 2800$
The list goes on like this.
Why create a new system when the fraud and corruption will just grow all the more in a huge system like national health care? The money pool is MUCH bigger in this , so will be the fraud and corruption. And they want us to pay for this fraud and corruption.
If our leaders and government wanted to really cut costs and help us, they would go hard on corruption and fraud first before “creating ” a new system. Why dont they? Well the reasons are many.
Why am I going on with this on a reform blog for cannabis?
Becareful who is running the system. Any system. Big money draws crooks, causes fraud/corruption. Uses the “little ” people without sympathy for the suffering it causes.
If not watched and put in check, it ruins said system,company,group,people…or god forbid …OUR NATION.
Under Bush the DEA claimed that buying drugs supported terrorism. According to this, growing pot actually fights terrorism AND the drug war. WOW! And mom thought I was just laying on the couch…
I wish I could be a part of this mom & pop initiative. Oh well just have to wait til I move out of this apartment then its homegrown for me all the way buddy. Just want to be part of the solution, and grow sweet cheeba that is.
What Mom & Pop growers are doing is awsome. The problem is when this is done illegally. Talking about growing without it being legal will just make us look like criminals willing to break laws of the people. What we need to do is carry the message to the streets that we the people can do what the government has failed to get done. If we support a law that takes away any future rights to continue this battle against crime cartels and gangland wars, we will be hurting ourselves. There is a momentum building and we need to roll with the tide.
We can have a good health care program if it covers a huge group of people. When so many people are involved and the true crooks (insurance companies) are taken down from their “Power Tower” where they decide who lives and who dies, things start to “Change”. Insurance Companies are like thieves that do there deeds in the dark. These are the ones that take your insurance premium as long as you are healthy, working and paying taxes. As soon as you get some serious illness they deny your coverage raise your premium so high that you can’t pay it then say you got behind on your premium so there fore your policy was canceled. Then you are seen as a bum that wants a free handout. You are cast aside so you have to go to the emergency room to try to save your self and this raises the cost of health care for everyone else. The “Change” comes from turning on the lights and catching the crooks in the act. “Change” began with the internet and it grows each day, as more and more people start to get involved. It makes it harder for the crooks to get away with their crimes.
It’s harvest week and the cops are having a frenzy busting people.
Be careful. There is no such thing as citizenship, everyone is a subject and a potential criminal when it comes to marijuana.
Bud from ky:
Yup your right. Insurance and politicains , non-profit groups alike. Anyone who take money they dont deserve or is intended for others are crooks, are involved in corruption/fraud.
People need to bring any corruption and fraud to the attention of the public…..truth and honesty is a very valuable thing these days.
This is key to changing our governments actions In everyday legislation and winning the fight against prohibition.
Another group of crooks are the government officials that take the money we intrusted them with. They sneek around behind closed doors and do things that benefit the groups that paid for their last campaign and the ones that will pay for their next campaign. When they don’t do the will of the nation they are crooks. “Change” brought on by the internet opens the doors and lets us see what they are doing and see their true nature. Then we have the right to vote or “Change”. This is not President Obama’s idea, this is something he had the wisdom to see and understand. He took advantage of this new tool and built momentum to get the message out that we the people can create “Change”, if we pull together, and work together, for good of the people, and not the special interest groups that for so long have had free reign over this country and the economy. They almost won by getting everyone they could in debt so deep that they started to loose everything they had. These crooks tried to bring this nation down so the could take complete control of the nation. We need to take back our nation and re-estabilish a way of life where you can have a living wage with a job that you can choose to stay with until you retire if you want to without the fear of the company closing down and moving to another country after taking advantage of the people to make them wealthy. We cad make a huge impact on health care by legalizing Hemp for use in all the things we use fossil fuels, trees, most other grains and cotton for today. We can reduce much of the polution that makes this nation and the rest of the world sick by doing just this. We need to legalize Marijuana for all adults so that not just people that are already sick can benefit from it healing powers, but anyone that is healthy now can use it if they choose to and they can stay healthy from its healing powers that will prevent them from getting cancers and many other diseases.
As you can tell from the last post that I’m having trouble typing. My wife works at Job Corp. and got sick from being in close quarters with a large group of students from all over the world. She brought a bug home and now I am coming down with something. This could kill me with my weakened system from all the Meds I have to take. This could probably have been avoided if we lived in a country where Marijuana was legal and companies didn’t fire you for pissing last nights Marijuana treatment. Unfortunately I live in Kentucky where the government will take away our home and our income and put us in prison for having a small bag of Marijuana. So we do not dare have anything to do with Marijuana and might even get our door kicked in (by guys that would scare a U.S. Marine because they wear what best could be described as a cross between the Gestapo and someone from Star Wars), just because I am on this site. The sad thing is it was our tax dollars that paid for all the tactical gear these guys wear just so they can bust down a little old lady’s door and shoot her full of holes because she didn’t put down her nitting needles fast enough. God knows she might have took one of them out. You just know when the story gets released to the News Papers, she had them out gunned and they had no choice but to return fire. Oh, and by the way even though they had the wrong address, she was in posession of “Marijuana – Weapon Inhanced” and operating a grow operation. (She was starting Tomatoes) but whats the difference? The point is these guys are local heroes, nobody would dare check the facts.
I can see charging something for your expenses and time not to mention Lights,Gas,Nutrients,Water and Misc supplies But to Charge around $400 an ounce for a WEED is absolutely ABSURD!!
At those prices the politicians are RIGHT!!! The Black market will undercut and still thrive, Full legalization is about the only way to go now,Let us grow ourselves, Prohibition only wastes taxpayer money and ruins peoples lives.
What if the government legalized Hemp and Cannabis and allowed everyone that wanted to grow their own as long as they grow in a secure plot and then gave half of what they grew to centralized recieving centers that made products from food to clean oil. This would supplement crops being grown by farmers. We could get completely away from foreign oil and we would be producing healthy foods, as opposed to most of the crap we buy in the store today. The health of the nation would improve and we would reduce the amount of fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides used on cropland. By growing as many plants as we can in every available yard and rooftop, we would be cleaning much of the CO2 that is currently polluting the air, which will slow down global warming. We will have the products to make safer medicines. This plant could change the world as we know it. And every person that needs the medicines could afford to have what they need.
Sorry Ben for asking you on the twitter blog if you were censoring this blog. Something happened earlier and the bottom part of this blog disappeared for a while. I got paranoid, can you imagine what would have happened had I been able to self medicate. My bad. lol
Indications bumper crop this harvest.Growing is mushrooming.Entry level prices falling,Nation awash in pot for the next 2 or 3 years. Total MJ.industry benifits, more established,more prominent,a greater % of the econemy. BECOMES the 8OOlb. gorrilla in any gov’t dialogue Re:REVENUE
I’m sure that at least some of these “unscrupulus streetcorner drug dealers” that people are forced to turn to after their dispensaries are closed down, Might just think of themselves as farmers whose market has just shut down. Perhaps they even think of themselves as hard working people who provide something that we value, at no small risk I might add What would you have them write on THEIR signs when they want to speak out? Oh I’m sorry they can’t speak, THEY’RE UNSCRUPULUS CRIMINALS.
I think that we, of all people, should be aware of the effect that this sort of scapegoating can have on this community
As far as price gouging goes, if you put your product on the street at what you think is a reasonable price you will soon find it being sold to others at prices more in line with what is considered “normal”. Nobody can change black market pricing by simply deciding to be reasonable. There will always be someone there to exploit any such idealistic futilities.
Reasonablness will only prevail AFTER prohibition stops driving the black market.
Just what we need!! Legalize pot and medicate all of America. Oh yea – pot will get legalized – just a matter of time….thanks Obama – I’m sure you have a Swisher Sweet somewhere! Like alcohol, pot will do nothing good for society but give the smokers the ability to get high and wreak more havoc on society. More DUI collisions where marijuana will be the major drug in the bloodstream….wow, you would have thought that we would havelarned what alcohol does to the driver, now lets legaliz weed and make it so much more available for the general populace to get aold of. Those who wouldn’t smoke weed because it was illegal, will now have no inhibitions and everyone will be at risk. Medical marijuana advocates typically use a script to cover their or someone elses ability to sell weed. I know of very few people who grow medical marijuana for their ailments without selling their harvest illegally to others…its a fact….growing medical marijuana is typically a farce. I am not against a person smoking weed if they REALLY benefit from its use. But please, don’t blow smoke and make it sound like its a well regulated program – thats a crock!!! Idiots that you are – you’ll continue to drag society down with you in your never ending battle to leaglize anything because you think its your right. When one of your family members gets crunched or killed from a DUI marijuana driver – maybe then it won’t mean so much to you to legalize this stuff. Have fun……
Some bumper stickers I would show if I wasn’t afraid of the cops
Grow your own… Help Stop Terrorism!
Support a Neighbor, By Local Pot
Buy USA grown, its Probably Organic too
Millions Can’t be wrong (pic of hemp leaf)
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