|
Nymphaea
Money-less Wanderer
Registered: 04/16/09
Posts: 2,061
Loc: Mitten
Last seen: 1 day, 6 hours
|
U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers
#11200877 - 10/07/09 02:03 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/06/AR2009100603847.html?sid=ST2009100603892
By Steve Fainaru and William Booth Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Cartels Face an Economic Battle U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers
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, who once made brands such as Acapulco Gold the standard for quality.
Almost all of the marijuana consumed in the multibillion-dollar U.S. market once came from Mexico or Colombia. Now as much as half is produced domestically, often by small-scale operators who painstakingly tend greenhouses and indoor gardens to produce the more potent, and expensive, product that consumers now demand, according to authorities and marijuana dealers on both sides of the border.
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 that have used the spectacular profits generated by pot sales to fuel the violence and corruption that plague the Mexican state.
While the trafficking of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine is the main focus of U.S. law enforcement, it is marijuana that has long provided most of the revenue for Mexican drug cartels. More than 60 percent of the cartels' revenue -- $8.6 billion out of $13.8 billion in 2006 -- came from U.S. marijuana sales, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Now, to stay competitive, Mexican traffickers are changing their business model to improve their product and streamline delivery. Well-organized Mexican cartels have also moved to increasingly cultivate marijuana on public lands in the United States, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center and local authorities. This strategy gives the Mexicans direct access to U.S. markets, avoids the risk of seizure at the border and reduces transportation costs.
Unlike cocaine, which the traffickers must buy and transport from South America, driving up costs, marijuana has been especially lucrative for the cartels because they control the business all the way from clandestine fields in the Mexican mountains to the wholesale dealers in U.S. cities such as Washington.
"It's pure profit," said Jorge Chabat, an expert on the drug trade at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City.
The exact dimensions of the U.S. marijuana market are unknown. The 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimated that 14.4 million Americans age 12 and over had used marijuana in the past month. More than 10 percent of the U.S. population reported smoking pot once in the past year.
Mexico produced 35 million pounds of marijuana last year, according to government estimates. On a hidden hilltop field in Mexico's Sinaloa state, reachable by donkey, a pound of pot might earn a farmer $25. The wholesale price for the same pound in Phoenix is $550, and so the Mexican cartels could be selling $20 billion worth of marijuana in the U.S. market each year.
"Marijuana created the drug trafficking organizations you see today. The founding families of the cartels got their start with pot. And marijuana remains a highly profitable business they will fight to protect," said Luis Astorga, a leading authority on the drug cartels at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who grew up in Sinaloa in 1960s and recalls seeing major growers at social functions in the state capital, Culiacan.
Led by California, 13 U.S. states now permit some use of marijuana; Maryland is considering such a law. In many cities, marijuana is one of the lowest priorities for police.
-------------------- Plant Trees
|
2859558484
Growery is Better
Registered: 01/10/06
Posts: 8,752
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: Nymphaea]
#11200887 - 10/07/09 02:06 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
35 million pounds? not sure i believe that number
--------------------
|
buddhabadger
Evil Overlord
Registered: 01/16/09
Posts: 491
Loc: The Forest
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: 2859558484]
#11201027 - 10/07/09 02:32 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
This won't piss off the cartels at all, nosirree.
-------------------- - I don't abuse drugs; in fact, I think I treat them quite nicely. -
|
Naxx
LSD to DMT
Registered: 03/07/08
Posts: 187
Loc: the bog
Last seen: 13 years, 7 months
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: buddhabadger]
#11201120 - 10/07/09 02:47 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
gotta grow that economy...
in my area, getting mexican weed is a joke, local grown dominates entirely. quality overthrew quantity ages ago.
Edited by Naxx (10/07/09 03:08 PM)
|
Cap Stemson
Stranger
Registered: 03/30/09
Posts: 70
Last seen: 12 years, 11 months
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: Naxx]
#11201166 - 10/07/09 02:54 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
If the United States government REALLY wanted to do away with the cartels, they would legalize the cannabis. But most law-makers are either too caught up in the right-wing propoganda or just corrupt.
There is no such thing as "pure profit", these cartels have to incure expenses such as, transportation, guns, bribes, etc.
|
PoopSoap
Genetically Modified Organism
Registered: 01/24/09
Posts: 603
Last seen: 9 years, 30 days
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: Cap Stemson]
#11201751 - 10/07/09 04:36 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
i absolutely hate that low quality mexican weed. i got some recently because i was tight on money and i think i would have gotten higher smoking the grass on our lawn.
|
Magick
Thinker
Registered: 01/25/09
Posts: 846
Last seen: 6 years, 4 days
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: PoopSoap]
#11201831 - 10/07/09 04:49 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
See that? We have a solution to the violence right there.
|
Bigwigwabbit
WHO THIS IS?!?!?!
Registered: 09/11/09
Posts: 85
Loc: South central beahhhtch!!...
Last seen: 4 years, 7 months
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: Magick]
#11201993 - 10/07/09 05:08 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
KEWL! nice read. Gracias
-------------------- Learning 2 grow!!!
|
BoomerMan420
Stranger
Registered: 10/24/07
Posts: 1,641
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: Bigwigwabbit]
#11202704 - 10/07/09 06:56 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Who da fuck wants dirt weed? I dont want nothing to do with their killings and oppression fuck off cartels!!!!!!
|
BoomerMan420
Stranger
Registered: 10/24/07
Posts: 1,641
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: Bigwigwabbit]
#11202813 - 10/07/09 07:09 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Who da fuck wants dirt weed? I dont want nothing to do with their killings and oppression fuck off cartels!!!!!!
|
TheShroomJew23
The Chemist
Registered: 11/29/07
Posts: 1,611
Loc: Temple
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: BoomerMan420]
#11204018 - 10/07/09 09:58 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
All the bud in my area has been kush or dro for years now, the only time people buy mexican weed is for brownies and even then its not the best option. I can get an ounce of mexican bud for 40-50 bucks an ounce, but its only 600 if I buy by the pound.
-------------------- You will be missed
|
Dephect
Registered: 08/10/07
Posts: 1,779
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: TheShroomJew23]
#11205076 - 10/08/09 12:47 AM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Cartels need to fuck off, Americas got its own weed. We don't need that schwag.
|
rodfarva
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=====-----=-=-=-=-I
Registered: 07/31/07
Posts: 4,982
Last seen: 7 years, 1 month
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: Nymphaea]
#11205651 - 10/08/09 03:27 AM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
i cant get a lb of shwag here for less than $1000 (Michigan). I dont know where you fuckers live, but I hear a O of medical MJ in cali is > $300.
Dont fuck with me and say you get a lb of dank in Detroit for less than $1500. (assuming you didnt grow it.)
--------------------
|
nice1
Not the droid your looking for
Registered: 09/26/09
Posts: 10,449
Loc: earth
Last seen: 11 years, 2 months
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: Dephect]
#11205846 - 10/08/09 05:23 AM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Shwag is good. It helps keep prices down. The more weed on offer the better for the consumer.
Without the shwag, prices would raise as demand for other stuff rises.
|
h00ligaN
knowledge fiend
Registered: 07/06/09
Posts: 262
Loc: misery
Last seen: 10 years, 11 months
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: Cap Stemson]
#11206117 - 10/08/09 06:54 AM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Cap Stemson said: If the United States government REALLY wanted to do away with the cartels, they would legalize the cannabis. But most law-makers are either too caught up in the right-wing propoganda or just corrupt.
There is no such thing as "pure profit", these cartels have to incure expenses such as, transportation, guns, bribes, etc.
yeah.. The government need to legalize AND quit doing all that blow with the hookers... with a penis. You don't think that the cartels have lobbyist in Washington pushing for the drug war? Makes sense right? You think they stop at coke carrying submarines and throwing hand grenades in American night clubs? Just cause they don't write headlines about it doesn't mean shit, there is always a psychological and influence battleground in any war.
-------------------- you can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution.
|
MisterMuscaria
Registered: 05/13/08
Posts: 27,646
Loc:
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: Nymphaea]
#11206207 - 10/08/09 07:38 AM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Buy American.
|
Cognitive_Shift
CS actual
Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 29,591
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: MisterMuscaria]
#11206461 - 10/08/09 09:00 AM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Why be worried about marijuana when you control heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. The cartels are still going to make bankkkkkk.
-------------------- L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs
|
thedestroyer
Stranger
Registered: 10/01/09
Posts: 24
Last seen: 2 years, 9 months
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: Cognitive_Shift]
#11210010 - 10/08/09 06:44 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
i think that the middle road is best, Mexican weed is cheep American, dutch, and Canadian seeds are better. what is called for is a meeting of the minds so to speak, lets give them better seeds. the result a federation of farmers that could in time rise and cast off the yoke of oppression and propel humanity to its next evolutionary step- Homo sapien-sapien astroensis or space people for short. the way i see it this is the only way to make sense out of the whole mess.
|
MisterMuscaria
Registered: 05/13/08
Posts: 27,646
Loc:
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: thedestroyer]
#11210016 - 10/08/09 06:46 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
American weed > Canadian weed > Mexican weed
|
RoosterCogburn
Fearless,one-eyed U.S.Marshall
Registered: 08/25/06
Posts: 8,508
Loc: Dirty South, NJ
Last seen: 12 years, 6 months
|
Re: U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers [Re: thedestroyer]
#11210018 - 10/08/09 06:47 PM (14 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
If I had enough money, I'd mail 100 feminized Cannabis Cup Winning seeds to every farmer in Mexico...
|
|