Cannabis Chronicles

In a story originally reported by the Willits News, it’s told that Mexican and South American drug cartels are active and present, even in the heart of California’s so called “Emerald Triangle”, a trend that’s another symptom of the ultimate failure of U.S. drug war policies.

Here’s the original piece . . .

The changing face of the county drug trade
By Linda Williams/TWN Staff Writer - 11/16/2007

Mexican drug trafficking organizations considered by the US Department of Justice to be responsible for the large marijuana grows on public lands in Mendocino County are now the main supplier of illegal drugs in the United States.

These organizations do not limit themselves to the cultivation and distribution of marijuana; they are leaders in nearly every form of illegal drug distribution, especially in the Western states. The biggest Mexican drug cartels continue to be run by four main families and are known as the Tijuana, Gulf and Juarez cartels and the Federation. These groups have their roots in the early days of prohibition and the heroin trade. For many years, growing opium poppies was legal within Mexico although illegal in the United States.

When the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect with Mexico in 1994, it appears to have changed the face of the drug trade in both the United States and Mexico. As commercial truck, train and ship traffic increased between the countries, the flow of drugs and money also increased along the 2,000-mile border.

Mexican DTOs now bring in about 90 percent of the cocaine used in the United States, even though nearly all the coca continues to be grown in Columbia.

The Columbian drug cartels appear to have found the Mexican DTOs to be effective distributors for their product. In the year 2000, cocaine importation from Mexico was estimated at 500,000 pounds and by last year, it had grown to nearly one million pounds. The total amount of cocaine confiscated by law enforcement in either country during those same years ranged from 61,000 to 100,000 pounds.

Heroin made from poppies grown in Mexico is now the most widely distributed heroin in the United States with 20,000 pounds imported in 2000 rising to 60,000 pounds more recently. While only five percent is confiscated in its finished form nearly 40,000 Mexican soldiers are involved annually in wiping out marijuana and poppies in the fields. In 2005, about 27,000 acres of poppies were eradicated leaving an estimated 8,000 acres in cultivation.

As precursor chemicals for methamphetamine became harder to get within the U.S., labs in Mexico began to supply a bigger and bigger percentage of the U.S. market. Mexican meth production has not been reliably estimated but 1,100 pounds were seized in 2000 and about 6,000 pounds were intercepted in both 2005 and 2006.

Marijuana imports remained strong starting at more than 1.5 million pounds in 2000 and peaking at 3 million in 2003. Nearly 30 percent of the packaged marijuana imported into the U.S. was intercepted, based on estimates by the US General Accounting Office. Most of the Mexican eradication efforts are focused on destroying the crops in the fields with 43,000 acres of marijuana either sprayed with herbicides or destroyed by soldiers. An estimated 14,000 acres of marijuana remained.

Editor’s note: This is the first article of two examining drug trafficking organizations affecting Mendocino County. Information was gleaned from recent publications by the US GAO, DOJ and the Drug Enforcement Agency.

It could be argued, that the war on drugs, is actually creating a real threat to the sovereignty of the United States of America. The specter of squatters cropping on public lands, places like National Forests, is something we’d expect in third world countries, not in the U.S.  It’s a sad ongoing story . . .

Will government officials wake up in time to react and put an end to this tragedy before it’s too late?
Stay tuned for another exciting episode of “Drug War Follies” . . .