According to the Washington Post, the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington State is making life hard for cannabis farmers in Mexico.
In a recent article the Post noted that the wholesale price of weed has collapsed in the past five years, from 100 dollars per kilogram to less than 25 dollars.
The story said farmers in the “Golden Triangle” region of Mexico’s Sinaloa state are no longer planting the crop.
The paper highlighted farmer Rodrigo Silla, who has stopped growing cannabis for the first time in many years “I wish the Americans would stop with this legalization,” he said.Retired federal agent Terry Nelson, a former field level commander told Vice News,: “Is (legalization) hurting the cartels? Yes. The cartels are criminal organizations that were making as much as 35-40 percent of their income from marijuana ... They now aren’t able to move as much cannabis inside the United States.”
A recent report by the Mexican Competitiveness Institute suggested that legalization of marijuana in Colorado, Oregon and Washington could cut Mexican drug cartels’ earnings from traffic to the United States by as much as 30 percent.
According to Vice, in recent years about 10 million pounds of pot has been grown in the United States each year, with four times as much coming across the border from Mexico.
The downside of this trend is that farmers are changing their growing habits and planting more opium poppies instead. Consequently, cartels are transporting more heroin into the United States.
Federal data indicates a 79 percent increase in heroin usage between 2007 and 2012.