as wholesale The price of a pound of legal cannabis is dropping in some states On the border with Mexico, the country’s cartels are turning to more profitable drugs: fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced this week that Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45Thanks in part to criminal involvement in several countries.
Texas The only state bordering Mexico without cannabis for adults, is shown in the prices. Mexico’s cartels once relied on organic farms of poppies and hemp to produce drugs, but times have changed. Illicit cannabis eradication in Mexico has been halved in recent years – in line with the timeline for the legalization of cannabis in the North.
Mexico’s Defense Minister, General Luis Cresencio Sandoval, said that for the cartels, cannabis and other organic drugs such as opium-rich poppy have been excluded, and fentanyl is present.
the News agency Reports show that, according to Sandoval, seizures of fentanyl rose 525 percent during the first three years of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office on December 1, 2018, compared to the previous three years.
During that time period, law enforcement seized 1,232 pounds (559 kilograms) of fentanyl in 2016-2018 and 7,710 pounds (3,497 kilograms) in 2019-2021.
The reason for this switch is that the bottom line improves when cartel operations switch from organic opium to synthetic opioids, which are cheaper to produce. “There has been a change in consumption, there has been a change in drug markets because of the ease with which synthetic drugs can be produced,” Sandoval said. The cartels no longer had to pay for manpower to grow poppies and slowly scrape opium from the poppy bulbs. The same can be said about the process of growing / pruning / treating cannabis.
But synthetic drugs do not come from Mexico. Mexican cartels can Order fentanyl online from Asia at wholesale price, then cut into street-ready potions. Laboratories also produce drugs like methamphetamine, which are also more profitable than organic cannabis or opium. “The labs caught or seized in this department have greater capacity, which has allowed us to seize more methamphetamine products,” Sandoval said.
Meth seizures rose from 120,100 pounds (54,521 kilograms) in 2016-2018 to nearly 275,000 pounds (124,735 kilograms) in the past three years — an increase of 128 percent. On November 18, a record amount of meth and fentanyl delivered from a truck driver was discovered at the Otay Mesa port of entry in San Diego, according to the Report from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California. Border agents found 17,584 pounds of methamphetamine and 388.93 pounds of fentanyl in the truck.
Mexico data matches Recent documents Updated October 14, it was compiled by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which operates within the Library of Congress and works directly for members of Congress. “Despite early disruptions in the supply chain, illicit drug supplies destined for the United States appear to have returned to pre-pandemic levels; illicit fentanyl flows in particular appear to be burgeoning.” Just a year ago, the CRS admitted that legal cannabis in particular harms cartels In another document. CRS writes: “Authorities expect US demand for Mexican marijuana to continue to decline because drugs ‘other than marijuana’ are likely to prevail.” “This is also the case due to legal or medicinal cannabis in many US states and Canada, which reduces its value as part of the portfolio of Mexican trafficking organizations.”
Meanwhile, the Mexican Senate is On the right track to endorse recreational cannabis.
However, some cartel operations plan to sell cannabis, legal or not. the Daily Beast Stating that The Sinaloa Cartel is already working to infiltrate the legal pot market in Mexico, according to “cartel activists”. It’s unclear how the cartel plans to move forward, such as making its way toward licensing.
