Small Marijuana Producers Have Growing Market Influence

So many smalltime marijuana operations have sprung up in the U.S. that they are starting to make a serious dent in the profits of Mexico’s violent drug cartels, the Washington Post reported Oct. 7.

Experts say that the modest growers have accomplished what decades of arrests and drug seizures have tried and failed to do, hitting international cartels in the wallet. The trend toward small, local marijuana cultivation has been fueled by the crackdown on the U.S.-Mexico border as well as state medical-marijuana laws.

Up to half of the marijuana consumed in the U.S. is now produced domestically, with boutique growers using hydroponics to produce high-quality, potent marijuana that is craved by consumers. “What’s happened in the last five years, it’s just gotten totally, totally out of hand, as far as a green rush of people coming from all kinds of different states and realizing the kind of money you can make,” said Jack Nelsen, commander of the Humboldt County Drug Task Force in Northern California, which has become a major marijuana-growing region.

The trend has proven worrisome for Mexico’s cartels, which once helped supply nearly all the marijuana used in the U.S. and still rely on marijuana smuggling for 60 percent of their profits. In response, Mexican cartels are increasingly involved in U.S.-based grow operations, including setting up marijuana plantations on public lands.

“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 of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.