Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/03/legal-marijuana-is-finally-doing-what-the-drug-war-couldnt/

by potshot • 10 years ago

300 223 10 years ago

cygnus_a• 10 years ago

This is one of the main reasons I support legalization and/or decriminalization of all drugs. Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy.

I think it's still necessary to focus on reducing demand (through education and self-help, not punishment).

dominotw• 10 years ago

Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy.

would this apply to gun ownership too?

Archio• 10 years ago

Of course. Unfortunately the main issue there is that people disagree on exactly how much gun ownership should be regulated.

jacobolus4• 10 years ago

Absolutely, a regulated market would be better than a black market.

If every gun and every bullet were marked, all sales (or losses e.g. to theft) required registration with a central registry with the new owner requiring a proper license (including criminal background check, etc.), and distributors/manufacturers/registered owners were held liable for damages in the case of improper use, and with potential for their ownership/distribution license to be revoked, guns would become a lot safer. (Exactly what breakdown of liability is up for debate, but currently there is none whatsoever.)

Almost nobody has a problem with “gun ownership” in the abstract, and some type of gun ownership is legal in most parts of the world. The problems are with e.g. semiautomatic rifles being purchased on the black market and then used to shoot up schools, criminals trivially and untraceably getting their hands on as many guns as they want, people leaving guns lying around in places where children can play with them, or huge numbers of untraceable guns getting smuggled across the border into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

pcmaffey• 10 years ago

Yes. And it's always humorous (sad) when people use ideological reasoning to defend their right to x (e.g. guns). But then are blind to how it applies to y (e.g drugs).

edoceo• 10 years ago

In WA and CO (and others) cannabis is more regulated than guns.

jqm3• 10 years ago

I'm of the opinion people should be able to do what they want. And certainly drugs being illegal causes more problems than it solves. That being said, here is a case to think about.

When I was in my early 20's (20 years ago) I got a job in Phoenix AZ working on a concrete crew. We were building poured in place buildings (something like big box store size). First we would pour the floor. Then the walls on top of the floor and pull them up into place with a crane. It was extremely demanding work and the company beat the crap out of everyone. Very often we would get to work at 3 AM so we could pour before the sun to prevent the mud drying so fast. Lunch time was around 10 minutes and there weren't breaks. If you didn't run at all times... going to get a shovel...run, go for a drink of water, run you got yelled at. If you still didn't run a second time you were fired just like that.

My first day there were 7 or 8 new people. At the end of the day they had fired all the new people except me and one other guy. This went on for a couple of weeks until they had the crew they wanted. I needed the job and it paid pretty well (at the time) so I ran and busted ass like you wouldn't believe. After a couple of months I got let go as well and was very OK with it. It was completely nuts and I'm sure illegal as hell but no one appeared to complain and I'm not sure the state at the time and place would have listened anyway.

The point being... almost everyone on the job site was doing meth. Except me and maybe a couple of other people. I've never been a fan of meth and find it completely disgusting even though I'm not "anti-drug" and I damn sure wasn't about to do it out there. It was expected. The pace was set by meth. When you finally burnt out, you were thrown away and left with mental/health problems. But the building was up and the company owner made money.

That is my fear about legal drugs. Expectations. End results. Even social expectations like booze is now in many places. I want to do what I want to do... not be expected to do anything.

It's a complex problem. I don't know the answer. Maybe part of the answer is to invent better/less harmful drugs that are less easy to abuse and legalize those.

pille• 10 years ago

If I can try to paraphrase: Criminalization has been so ineffective that you were simply expected to use meth at this one job you had, because everyone else was doing it.

And you think this might argue in favor of continued criminalization?

Mz2• 10 years ago

Have an upvote, but I don't think the solution to resolving the kind of problem you describe is criminalization of substances. In fact, I think the crazy controlling environment you describe fits hand in glove with criminalization. They both essentially grow out of a mindset that one person has some inherent right to control another in highly invasive, fundamental ways. A "live and let live" attitude would create laws and effective means to protect employees from abusive employers of the type you describe while not caring what drugs you choose to take, so long as you can behave. "Your right to swing your fist stops where my face begins" and all that.

wildmusings6• 10 years ago

Here's how I look at it: it's a trade-off like any other. There are people with unsustainable work practices in every job. It could be long hours, little sleep, performance enhancing drugs, etc. If it makes them deliver better work, they'll get rewarded for it in their career, but they're most certainly suffering consequences elsewhere. Family strain, health problems, emotional drain, loneliness.

The temptation is strong to ban other people from making different trade-offs than us, because it keeps them from besting us in competition and challenging our value systems. But what right do we have to dictate what other people should value and what trade-offs they're allowed to make with their own lives? My sweat, blood, and tears are mine and mine alone to give and withhold.

golergka2• 10 years ago

I don't think that meth is the point of this story. There are a lot of ways to trade off your health for higher productivity, not necessarily with illegal drugs. Professional athletes do this with extensive training and accepting injury rates. Salarymen do it with 80 hour workweeks.

The point is, they make this decision themselves. I don't think that your colleagues were somehow oblivious to the fact that meth is bad. I also doubt that your employer gave them meth disguised as "work-enhancing vitamins" or something. When people do things like that, they see the downsides, and they make this decision regardless.

Is it a bad decision, a mistake, for a person to trade his health and long-term well-being and health for his job? Personally, I think that it is. But I also think that people have fundamental human right to do this kind of mistake, that they should be free to decide it for themselves.

Would you die of hunger if you didn't take this job? I don't think so. Could you and your colleagues find a more relaxed job that would put roof over your head and food on your table? I don't know your situation, but somehow I think that yes, you could. So, you didn't take this job just because it was necessary to physically survive, which would be a different situation.

So, if a person doesn't have to sacrifice his health to survive for his job, but does it because he wants something more — should we stop him from it?

losvedir• 10 years ago

Huh, have an upvote for bringing up a genuinely new point to me, thanks.

I've heard similar stories about how cooks abusing cocaine to keep up with the pace.

But I'd never made the connection that if it's legal, employers could expect performance-enhancing levels of productivity (more than I guess some restaurants and construction crews already do).

This is also an issue in professional sports and the olympics with athletes taking banned (but legal!) performance enhancing drugs. Similarly in colleges you see people abusing adderall or modafinil to study.

citizensixteen• 10 years ago

This is one of the main reasons I support legalization and/or decriminalization of all drugs. Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy.

Nobel economist Milton Friedman said, "The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill Said in the middle of the 19th century in 'On Liberty.' is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual’s own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it’s in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they’ll do you harm, why isn’t it all right to say you must not eat too much because you’ll do harm? Why isn’t it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you’re likely to die? Why isn’t it all right to say, “Oh, skiing, that’s no good, that’s a very dangerous sport, you’ll hurt yourself”? Where do you draw the line? If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.”

Milton Friedman interview from 1991 on America’s War on Drugs

https://www.aei.org/publication/milton-friedman-interview-fr...

andrewstuart2• 10 years ago

Pot is still illegal in Australia because, you know, it's bad.

leeoniya2• 10 years ago

But alcohol is, you know, grrrreeeat!

dllthomas• 10 years ago

You're confusing alcohol with, you know, Frosted Flakes.

ocdtrekkie• 10 years ago

The fact that we have one terrible substance that is legal isn't a justification to legalize another.

cnp3• 10 years ago

http://www.thecannabist.co/2016/02/10/australia-medical-mari...

The bill that would legalize cultivation of Australia medical marijuana is guaranteed to become law, with the main opposition party immediately pledging support

simplexion3• 10 years ago

This is annoying though because it is nothing more than a step towards legalisation based on pseudo-science (since there isn't any great evidence for the efficacy of cannabis in treating anything). Why can't we go straight to legalisation without all the wasted time and money used on the whole "medical" cannabis step?

pcl• 10 years ago

The cartels, of course, are adapting to the new reality. Seizure data appears to indicate that with marijuana profits tumbling, they're switching over to heroin and meth.

This is a really interesting development. There's always been this "gateway drug" argument around pot: once people start with marijuana, they'll move onto the harder stuff. I can imagine that there might be a correlation, but I expect that the causality is the other way around: once you break the law a bit for pot, and discover that it's really not a big deal, you assume that the other illegal drugs are probably fine too.

As marijuana becomes more and more legal in the US, it'll be interesting to see which way the causal link goes.

notthegov2• 10 years ago

Cannabis being illegal actually influences people to use prescription drugs and meth. If someone has a job that drug tests them or are on probation, then people will choose harder drugs (or alcohol). The only drug aside from PCP that stays in your system over 3 days is cannabis.

random_upvoter3• 10 years ago

Interestingly, in Colorado it's legal for a company to fire an employee who has (legally) smoked marijuana. So even with legalization drug tests may remain a thing.

anon987• 10 years ago

Here's to hoping people realize and deal with the real gateway drug: Prescription opiates

thatswrong0• 10 years ago

They're not just gateway drugs, but also a huge problem in and of themselves. I have a friend who went to rehab for heroin and he said most of the people there were addicted to oxycodone, not heroin. Opiates are not to be trifled with, yet some doctors are more than willing to throw them at people. My other friend was prescribed Norco for a sore throat >:(

cnp3• 10 years ago

Here's to hoping people realize and deal with the real gateway drug: Alcohol, that great destroyer of worlds, marriages, cultures, physical health and particularly the brain, time (hangovers, boredom), coping strategies (emotional pain), real pain (coping strategies), poor decision making (you know it), and so on. Start here, and come into it with a few entrenched problems, and sure enough you'll find yourself elsewhere should time and circumstance align.

To all the magical, healing drugs that are currenly illegal: may you one day be free. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_caus...

jessaustin• 10 years ago

Here's to hoping people realize that the whole concept of "gateway drug" is horseshit. Human beings exhibit a wide range of behaviors following the use of any substance, that usually have much more to do with the humans and with their environment than with the substance.

ssmoot• 10 years ago

These days it's hard to get a handful of Vicodin to get you through a few days of pain after hurting your back.

It's being "dealt with" for sure. I'm not sure the amount of inconvenience and needless suffering imposed is an improvement on anything. I've never abused drugs. Opiates after back pain, minor surgery or a root canal aren't a "gateway" to anything for the vast vast majority of people.

I don't know about recreational heroin, cocaine or meth. I'm going to err on the side of caution and suggest that they're probably something I don't want to see legalized.

OTOH it'd be nice if marijuana advocates would stop treating alcohol as if it's the worst substance known to man. Current DWI laws are not justified with science. Legalizing marijuana and criminalizing responsible consumption of alcohol is not progress. If everyone you know would probably be in jail were it not for the fact they haven't been caught, it's probably not a good law.

Sane pain management should be between you and your Dr. Ethical patient treatment should not be disincentivized because someone has a political agenda.

winter_blue• 10 years ago

Opioids are actually much less harmful than other stuff, even alcohol. Alcohol is a neurotoxin, i.e. it literally kills brain cells. On the other hand, everyone's bodies produces opioids naturally. Endorphins are opioids, and the rush you get when you work out at a gym, is you getting mildly high on the natural opioid, endorphin (whose name is short for "endogenous morphine").

Synthetic and natural opioids have the same mode of operation on your brain as endorphins. They bind to these things called "opioid receptors"[1] in your brain. There is a biological purpose for the existence of these receptors. Quoted from Wikipedia: "The endogenous opioid system is thought to be important in mediating complex social behaviors involved in the formation of stable, emotionally committed relationships."

Opiates actually seem to have a significant benefit to people suffering from severe and refractory major depression, where all other legal anti-depression medication has not helped them.[2] Now compare this with alcohol (ethanol) -- a substance that recklessly goes around destroying cells in your brain and your liver, which people take just to get rid of some social anxiety. Huh.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_receptor

[2] http://www.opioids.com/antidepressant/opiate.html

DigitalJack2• 10 years ago

Well, I sort of agree. I work with several fibromyalgia groups, and it's a simple fact that pain management in america is abysmal. The regulation of prescription opiates so onerus, it makes it extremely difficult for patients to get, and doctors to prescribe, the medication that would have a massive difference in their quality of life.

It is because of this that they find alternatives/substitutes, which range from alcohol to heroin to suicide. Two people I know have killed themselves because they could not deal with the pain and the medical system failed them.

lips• 10 years ago

The article fails to put the timeline of meth-centric US laws into perspective. i.e. restrictions on meth ingredient purchasing, the move from large US production facilities to imports to small homebrew operations. This isn't a particular area of interest to me, but to discuss law/supply/demand issues of marijuana, and then to casually toss in increases in meth and heroin without the same analysis of contributing factors is not truly informative.

rhizome• 10 years ago

Are you talking about consumers...or dealers? The gateway is supply-side, and decriminalizing and medicalizing drug abuse takes away all of their profit motive. Make pot legal, they'll move to other high profit drugs because that's what their suppliers will have. Legalization cuts off that entire miserable supply chain.

Mz2• 10 years ago

There's always been this "gateway drug" argument around pot

I have studied ...bunches of stuff. And I believe a huge factor is the fact that marijuana is illegal, so you cross an important legal threshold when you try it and that can become a slippery slope. I think details like that probably matter more than the substance per se. Addiction is hard to solve in part due to shame and all kinds of social reinforcement.

If you have a bad habit that won't get you stigmatized, ostracized and arrested, friends and family can be excellent sources of support for helping you break the habit. But when you can't TELL ANYONE...don't be surprised when a bad habit is exponentially harder to break when deprived of amiable social support.

lisivka2• 10 years ago

Crossing streets on red light is illegal too. Enjoy it.

Karunamon• 10 years ago

And I believe a huge factor is the fact that marijuana is illegal, so you cross an important legal threshold

I've always thought the "gateway drug" nonsense was, in part, due to the realization someone has that they've been blatantly, bald-fadedly lied to about drugs for most of their life. (DARE bangs on about cannabis like it was injecting heroin and PCP with dirty needles!)

And the next thought from there, naturally, is "Okay, now what else were they making up?

andrewstuart2• 10 years ago

My theory is that if you can't get a cheap, legal high then you are more susceptible to trying something else.

eru8• 10 years ago

Could you think of a way to test this?

(I imagine one can probably find lots of `natural experiments'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment)

LAMike• 10 years ago

Wow what a Black Swan event.

Take something illegal and taxing it heavily has a negative impact on the black market's profit and a positive impact on the economy. Truly disrupting the space.

conceit13• 10 years ago

I'm sure the black market profit doesn't even notice. However, many operations are still considered at least gray market as the feds take down plantations.

alxndr• 10 years ago

The black market is noticing; the article ends with this:

"The cartels, of course, are adapting to the new reality. Seizure data appears to indicate that with marijuana profits tumbling, they're switching over to heroin and meth."

spoiledtechie• 10 years ago

While the seizure rate has gone down, I believe this to be a two part or multiple part reason. Border agents have also gone way down along the border. It's a number that has also been rapidly decreasing over the past four years from the current administration. Ex: I am a past employee of Customs and Border.

xenadu02• 10 years ago

I don't see that in the federal data. Can you cite something to back up the claims? Border & Customs is still employing most of those people to work _somewhere_.

WalterBright• 10 years ago

It's pathetic that we've learned nothing at all from Prohibition.

caseysoftware• 10 years ago

The latest data from the U.S. Border Patrol shows that last year, marijuana seizures along the southwest border tumbled to their lowest level in at least a decade.

That does not mean there are less drugs being imported, just that less are being seized. I worked with the Border Patrol years ago and it was astounding how they tracked success:

- When arrests increased, they celebrated that enforcement was working.

- When arrests decreased, they celebrated that deterrence was working.

Heads I win, tails you lose.

While I'm in favor of legalization, you should take these numbers and the process that created them with a grain of salt..

pliny• 10 years ago

I get that measuring the effectiveness of enforcement is inherently difficult, but isn't the number of arrests made far away from the border an excellent proxy for how poorly border control is working? You can't isolate yourself from drugs manufactured in-state or from failures of other border patrol units (or successes of drug enforcement away from the border), but you also can't fuck with the stats.

tamana5• 10 years ago

Fucking with stats has always a key aspect of law enforcement.

gregpilling4• 10 years ago

Speaking of the US Border, it is way more porous than many people think. Here is a photo of the 2 strands of barbed wire that make up the border fence near Locheil Arizona.

If you ride your dirt bike along the border there (I did), then you will find a few dirt roads that cross the border that look heavily used. I spent 8 hours down there and was not approached by any Border Patrol (Saw some from 100 feet away, but no contact)

There is so much stuff crossing the border, in so many places.

https://www.google.com/maps/@31.333054,-110.626566,3a,75y/da...

umanwizard4• 10 years ago

I think most people (at least from the Southwest) know about this; otherwise Donald Trump's desire to "build a wall" would be incoherent.

lucaspiller• 10 years ago

Although there isn't so much of an immigration issue, the border between the EU and Russia is also non-existent in a lot of places:

https://euobserver.com/justice/130037

kaonashi• 10 years ago

Speaking of the US Border, it is way more porous than many people think.

Why would I think it wouldn't be porous? It's been that way the entire history of the world, why should we change it now?

ignoramous• 10 years ago

A problems for drones to solve I guess.

matt_wulfeck• 10 years ago

That's true and a good point, but the article also quotes a Mexican grower who says the bulk price has come down about 50%. That's money right out of the cartels pockets.

mirimir• 10 years ago

It's money out of the grower's pockets, for sure. But the cartels, they'll just focus on other products.

jeffdavis• 10 years ago

The best numbers to use are the prices, which they also cite.

Granted, there are still multiple factors at work and you need to take several measurements.

tanv_nadkarni• 10 years ago

All government programs tend to work like that. Recession ? Private players to be blamed and government needs to act. Economic boom ? Government programs caused that boom.

The legalization of marijuana is a much bigger battle. We will not get all the benefits of the free market unless government regulations are substantially reduced. If you cant buy Marijuana in Target or Wallmart it probably wont suffice.

ubernostrum• 10 years ago

All government programs tend to work like that. Recession ? Private players to be blamed and government needs to act. Economic boom ? Government programs caused that boom.

Recession? Poor private companies groaning under the massive burden of big-government regulation, and idiotic government "interventions" in the market are to blame! Economic boom? The miracle of the free market succeeding in spite of all obstacles! Hail the market! Down with big government!

The difference, of course, is that I don't know anyone who actually takes the "government is always the solution" line, but I do know plenty of people who take the "government is always the problem" line. So, um, nice straw man you've go there.

oldmanjay• 10 years ago

The actual headline would be better expressed as "legal marijuana undoing what the drug war caused"

ChuckMcM• 10 years ago

Its nice to have some data to confirm what many predicted. That said, the DEA is acutely aware that it is much easier to move drugs around once they are already in the country and so their mission my require installing border crossing checkpoints on states that have legalized those drugs.

I saw a sign on the Kansas side of a highway leaving Colorado that said "If you bought pot, leave it behind." Clearly someone had seen an uptick in drugs coming in that way.

gregpilling4• 10 years ago

Another reason not mentioned in the article is quality. Domestically produced hydroponically grown marijuana is so much better than the Mexican weed. I live 60 miles from Mexico in Tucson Arizona, we see a lot of it around here. The quality difference is huge - compare your favorite craft brew with Bud Light that has been left in the sun too long.

I had a friend give me an ounce of Mexican weed last year. That is a fair bit of weed. I tried a sample one night, and then gave it back. It wasn't worth keeping around, even for free. I knew I would just never use it, it was typical Mexican ditch weed and my tastes had gone to better things.

So which beer did you want? Sam Adams, or this Miller with a cigarette in it? The Mexican weed is just disgusting now. Only people on a tight budget will use it, not people with a choice; maybe 10% of the users I know. Everyone else gets the good stuff. Light, fluffy with 20 strains to choose from, tested and graded, and you can pick out the individual bud that speaks to you; or compressed brick that smells a little like coffee or grease and has an unknown THC level, unknown origin, unknown anything.

The only positive attribute to the Mexican weed is price.

seizethecheese• 10 years ago

Thank you. I hardly ever see comments about the benefits of legalization to casual weed smokers. Maybe we haven't shed the stigma yet, but this isn't just bad for drug lords and for-profit prisons, this is good for millions of consumers!

conceit13• 10 years ago

The biggest commercial operations are run by passionless businesses. The hydro homegrow on the other hand hardly qualifies as casual.

such_a_casual5• 10 years ago

The true price of weed is like $1/gram.

noobermin• 10 years ago

Not to nitpick, but right in the article:

And it's not just price — Mexican growers are facing pressure on quality, too. "The quality of marijuana produced in Mexico and the Caribbean is thought to be inferior to the marijuana produced domestically in the United States or in Canada," the DEA wrote last year in its 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment.

They perhaps didn't elaborate on it (from a good and interesting perspective) as you have, but it was mentioned.

conceit13• 10 years ago

Since when is the sun worse than indoor lighting?

rexfm• 10 years ago

It's more about a controlled growing environment. Outdoors there's a 100% higher chance of pollination, which means seeds and spindly buds. Indoors it's much easier to separate male and female plants, and also much more likely to have consistent watering etc which leads to more lush growth

imgabe• 10 years ago

The sun comes up and goes down on its own schedule. Indoor lights can be turned on and off as needed to change how and when the plants mature.

jonknee2• 10 years ago

Since advanced indoor grow operations existed. The Sun is better only in price. Indoors you can control all the variables and have a consistently grown product on a schedule. It's far too expensive for most crops, but marijuana isn't most crops.

such_a_casual5• 10 years ago

It's about quality control. You have more certainty about soil, air, water, light, insects, animals, etc. So the scientific method is more effective.

On a side note: outdoor plants grow much larger, and as such have much larger yields.

such_a_casual5• 10 years ago

I mean, I don't think there's anyone in California smoking weed grown in Mexico. There just wouldn't be any reason to.

LordKano• 10 years ago

Is anyone surprised by this?

It's the same thing that happened when alcohol prohibition was lifted.

logibly• 10 years ago

Why was marijuana in the "illegal" list in the place ? Any scientific studies that it is more harmful then alcohol or smoking ? Here in India it is legal and part of the religious traditions since thousands of years. It's known as "bhang" in hindi.

Essentially legalizing is just getting thing right which was wrong earlier.

roel_v• 10 years ago

"Here in India it is legal "

That's a rather spectacular claim to make, and indeed, the very first sentence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_India says " All forms of cannabis are currently illegal in India, with some limited allowances made for some traditional preparations." So either you are wrong or the Wikipedia article is, along with all its references, history etc. I'm not a betting man but if I were, I know where I'd put my money...

Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

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