Many older stoners remember low-grade brick weed, traditionally grown at enormous farms in Mexico, as a commonly available product in the U.S.. But Mexican-grown weed sold on the black market started falling out of favor decades ago as it competed with domestically-grown cannabis. NORML reports that border seizures for Mexican-grown pot at the southwest border have hit a record low.
Hydroponics, organic inputs, feminized seeds, and other improved growing methods made low-quality seeded weed grown outdoors in bulk by cartels a thing of the past. The relatively new phenomenon of state-legal adult-use cannabis, which started in 2014 put the final nail in the coffin for the trade of Mexican-grown weed in the U.S.
Seizures of Mexican-grown cannabis peaked in 2009, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents seized 3.3 million pounds (1.5 million kilos) of cannabis on the southwest border that year, the highest amount ever recorded. Often the low-quality weed, a brownish or dark green color, was seeded and vacuum-pressed into kilo-sized bricks, ready to be smuggled over the border. For many Americans, this type of weed was all they could get before domestically-grown, or legal cannabis came to their state.
“The rise of the regulated state-legal cannabis market has not only supplanted Americans’ demand for Mexican cannabis, but in many places it has also disrupted the unregulated domestic marketplace.” https://t.co/BTxlETZJSH— NORML (@NORML) May 7, 2024
Nowadays, border patrol agents are intercepting far less cannabis, which can no longer compete with potent pot available at adult-use cannabis retail shops in California, Arizona, and New Mexico, which all border Mexico.
Tracing back to 2009, you can see a long, steady plunge that shows the weed-smuggling business at the southern U.S-Mexico border is a shadow of what it used to be.
Plunging Cannabis Seizure Statistics at the Border
Agents are finding …
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Author: Benjamin M. Adams / High Times
