Organized Crime
There are a few things I have decided that I can definitely count on in life, other than that old “death and taxes” bit. Here’s a partial list: my kids will start getting excited for Christmas well before Halloween; the Broncos will always be good enough to break our hearts (unless of course we are talking about the 2015-16 season in which we proved to be the best team in the NFL); I will never understand how the game of cricket is scored; and at every talk I give, someone will pontificate, under the guise of asking a question, about how much the cartels suck and how marijuana legalization will fix those criminal bastards!
Were that true, were the organized crime issue that simple to fix, I would be at the front of the parade in my “Legalize It!” shirt and I would maybe be a card-carrying NORML, SAFER, and DPA member. Unfortunately, the reality is much more complex. Depending on what study you look at, between 7 and 20 percent of the cartels’ revenue is generated from selling marijuana. For whatever someone wants to say about drug cartels, never let it be said that they don’t know how to make money. They make money—lots and lots of money—and they will not write off any loss to their bottom line because we change some drug laws. I’m pretty sure that El Chapo’s guys aren’t going to go out and get jobs at KFC if the world legalizes weed. They will find new ways to get paid and they will be very good at it. Selling marijuana across the border has always baffled me a bit when there are so many other ways to get us to hand our dollars over, many with less stress on their end. Prices of weed fluctuate wildly depending on geography, potency, and quantity in which it’s sold. For the most part, a pound of Mexican weed has a street value of $650, but Colorado weed costs $2,000 a pound. Compare that with a pound of meth for $7,000, a pound of processed cocaine at $14,700, and a pound of heroin going for $12,500. So why would the cartels ever go to the trouble of smuggling tons of weed into the United States instead of using that space for more profitable substances? This has always baffled me—until I realized that weed might be a really good way to get people more comfortable with using “harder” drugs.
It wasn’t six months into Colorado’s “experiment” that news stories started showing up telling us how marijuana fields south of the border were being rapidly repurposed to grow poppies for heroin. More heroin isn’t good. Lots of people die from consuming too much, including many of my friends.
So long as there is a thirst for drugs there will be those willing to supply those drugs no matter the harm caused, the lives lost, and the cost to society. There are some who believe that this truth means we should throw in the towel and commercialize it all. Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director at the DPA, is very frank, “Let’s stop pretending we want a drug-free society! Drugs are here to stay.” That kind of nihilism scares me and defies simple logic. Carry that logic over to almost any other example and the ridiculousness is exposed. “People will always speed, what’s the use of speed limits?” “We can’t stop people from stealing cars, so why not make car theft legal?” “People will smoke cigarettes/meth/crack, so why try to stop them? Let’s legalize it, tax it, and we’ll all benefit!” We have made amazing progress combating cigarette smoking, not because we said, “Screw it, smokers are gonna smoke!” but because we made people aware of the very real health issues, fought the perception that it wasn’t harmful, and stigmatized its use. How many teenagers do you see sneaking cigarettes these days? Likely not many. It’s not cool anymore—and that’s a great thing. Fewer people smoking means cheaper healthcare for all of us, definitely cleaner air and workplaces, and sidewalks, beaches, and parks not quite as littered with cigarette butts.
That logic holds perfectly true with drugs. If we really want to hit the cartels where it will hurt, I know how. We don’t need the army or CIA, machine guns or grenades, informants and border patrol. We need to consume fewer drugs in America. Were we to move away from the idea that intoxication is the norm, that drug use is a forgone conclusion, that we can’t possibly do anything about our appetite to get high, much would change. We need to be willing to take a hard look inside instead of pointing fingers “out there.” Soon we would find that every time we get wasted we strengthen their position, we give them power. Consider that the next time you light up. Your drug use, at any level, makes cartels stronger.
We live in an age when being intoxicated is becoming the status quo. When massive advertising campaigns are being run to normalize a drug-induced state of mind. It’s no longer something that is done in a celebratory manner with friends. Getting wasted is becoming “the new normal,” and the cartels are laughing all the way to the bank!
I can be more passionate about this subject than most others, but I’ll wait to close the chapter out with that soapbox.
In November 2013, forty-nine-year-old Hector Diaz was arrested at his $1.3 million home in an affluent area of metro Denver following raids focused on ten other Colombians tied to cartels who were running fifteen grow houses.
In 2015, a bunch of illegal grows were busted in national forests and state lands—you know, the place we go camping with our kids. These were also run by gangs from south of the border. Thanks to Fox 31 Denver for the story and summary.
Pike National Forest, August 19, in the Green Mountain Area in Jefferson County. Investigation is ongoing.
Law Enforcement Officers from the U.S. Forest Service, Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and the Colorado National Guard Joint Counter Drug Task Force joined together to complete an eradication of an illegal marijuana grow site in the Pike National Forest. The eradication team collected more than 3,900 plants and over 3,000 pounds of irrigation pipe, pesticides, flammable liquids, camping gear, and trash.
Pike National Forest, August 19 in the Green Mountain Area in Jefferson County. Investigation is ongoing.
Law Enforcement Officers from the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Routt County Sheriff’s Office joined together to eradicate an illegal marijuana grow site located in the Buffalo Pass area, northeast of Steamboat Springs. The eradication team collected approximately 1,000 plants and removed camping gear from the site. Further, a handgun was found. Additional site clean-up of trash and other items will be ongoing by the U.S. Forest Service. Two Mexican nationals in the country illegally were arrested.
Private Land, September 1, Cotopaxi and Westcliffe in Freemont and Custer County. 20 people arrested.
A DEA-led task force executed eight search warrants in Cotopaxi and Westcliffe as part of a major drug trafficking organization investigation. Agents and officers found well over 1,000 marijuana plants, 50 pounds of dried marijuana, 28 firearms, and $25,000 in cash. The investigation and seizures resulted ultimately in the arrest of 20 individuals, many from Cuba, acting in an organized manner according to investigators. Those arrested were growing the marijuana in Cotopaxi and Westcliffe, and then either driving or using UPS to get it to Florida.
San Isabel National Forest, September 7, Cordova Pass Area northwest of Trinidad in Huerfano County, two arrested.
Hunters discovered an illegal marijuana grow site located in the Cordova Pass area approximately 40 miles northwest of Trinidad. The eradication team collected more than 11,700 plants as well as irrigation pipe, pesticides, flammable liquids, camping gear and trash. The U.S. Forest Service and Huerfano County Sheriff’s Office are working together to identify the individuals. The cultivation site spread across
10 acres with some of the growing areas above 10,000 feet in elevation. The overall grow area included a kitchen structure, three sleeping areas and a rifle. Two men were arrested at one of the campsites within the cultivation area.
Bureau of Land Management land, September 15, along the Dolores River corridor between Gateway and Naturita in Montrose County, four arrested.
BLM Rangers discovered more than 1,200 fully mature marijuana plants, many exceeding six feet tall, along with 211 kilograms of dried marijuana and a rifle. Because of the size of the operation, officers spent two-and-a-half days eradicating and removing the plants. The rangers arrested four Mexican nationals who were on-scene and believed to be working the grow site.
Bureau of Land Management land, September 30, also along the Dolores River corridor between Gateway and Naturita in Montrose County, six arrested.
Law enforcement officers identified a marijuana grow site, also along the Dolores River. Evidence of at least 1,000 marijuana plants appeared recently harvested with approximately 69.6 kilograms of processed marijuana still on site. The rangers arrested one Honduran and five Mexican nationals at or near the site.
The reality is that we have beaten the border crossing for them! Why in the world would they risk losing product and incurring the added expense of getting weed from Mexico into the U.S. when Colorado’s borders aren’t protected? These cartel growers exist in the “gray” market that has been created since legalization. We are awash in weed, growing massive quantities with impunity and shipping it out from here. That’s why there were eighty-eight filings regarding weed under the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act between 2012 and 2015. I’m not the best business man in the world—just ask my wife—but I know enough to tell you that we have hung a great big green “help wanted” sign at our southern border. We have communicated very clearly to the cartels: We love getting high up here, come help us! We have also given them a place to launder their money that has to be second to none. In our all-cash free-for-all industry we are awash in Benjamins. We aren’t going to solve the banking issue that keeps any money made selling weed, even in a “legal” market, illegal for the bank to accept anytime soon, so the THC business will continue to operate on the fringes of our financial system. With that much cash flying around why not set up shop in Colorado to wash the money you earn selling other drugs, extorting families of kidnapping victims, and running guns? We have given them a place where huge amounts of cash that smell like drugs are the norm and where they have lobbyists working to get that money into the established financial system.
Many of our dispensaries are openly advertising that they take credit cards. In fact, I once used a credit card to purchase edibles to prove a point before a talk a friend was giving in Colorado. Those credit cards can’t be accepted for the sale of THC; it’s illegal, so they have to be dummy corporations. If you own a weed shop and want to take my Amex, you will have to run it through a legal business. I’m guessing that these dispensaries take cash for their THC and run the credit cards through front corporations, maybe a lawn service or something. I’ll bet they get a good laugh each time they run a credit card for “grass services” and the customer walks out the door with an ounce of infused gummy bears.
Let’s take a break from organized crime and look at what’s going on with law enforcement as it pertains to weed. I do a bunch of training and speaking to police all over the country and the mood seems to be pretty universal: it’s not happy. While you might think that they’d have to spend less time worrying about weed because it is now legal, the opposite is actually true. Because the commercialized THC scene is changing so quickly, they can hardly keep up with all of the demands on them to enforce existing laws while learning new ones.
I know a bunch of cops in all different divisions: uniformed officers, vice, highway patrol, and administrative brass. Not one of them has ever told me that they locked people up for smoking weed. Nobody was kicking doors in to bust Grandma eating a brownie or Uncle Whoever burning one down. Most law enforcement hasn’t cared about personal use for years. Someone found in possession of two ounces or less; received a simple citation in Colorado pre-A64. And while we can, of course, find examples of instances contrary to that statement, it holds true the vast majority of the time. For all of the talk about freeing up their time so they can focus on “real crime” all we have done is bog them down in weed-related violations, such as trafficking and illegal grows, making it harder to focus on anything else. One new expense has been to retire the drug dogs in the state (can’t un-train a dog to smell something). These dogs were trained to sniff out all drugs, but now if they hit on weed, anything they discover is not legally “discoverable.” Because of this, they have to train up a whole new batch of dogs—not cheap, from what I understand. The most ironic part of all this is that legalization laws made sure none of the tax money collected from weed sales went to help defer those costs. Municipalities are having to pay for all of this out of their own budgets.
A friend of mine, John Jackson, is the Chief of Police in Greenwood Village, an upscale bedroom community in metro Denver, and home to my favorite steak in Colorado—ahhh Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House, you are a special place. Chief Jackson and I were talking the other day and I asked him if he could give me an anonymous quote for this chapter because so many of the other people I knew weren’t into going on the record on this subject—kind of politically charged. After giving permission to quote him directly, Chief Jackson got a call and put me on hold while he was informed that no one could be found to prosecute a huge bust they had just made of an illegal grow in a residential neighborhood. All the time-consuming and painstaking work their team had done was down the drain because people are afraid to lose cases and take on The Lobby that seems to get involved in every case they see, so nobody wants to prosecute.
Anyway, I asked Chief Jackson if things had gotten easier or harder for his department since A64 passed. He told me this: “Marijuana is occupying so much of our time. It is freaking out our neighborhoods and filling up our property rooms. We are absolutely not getting time back, it’s a farce to say that we get more time back than we spend.”
We’re wasting the cops’ time and making their jobs of protecting us harder. We are also giving a very scary message to people who don’t like law enforcement. When the U.S. Department of Justice, under former Attorney General Eric Holder, adopted a policy of being selective in enforcing some drug laws and not others, as is the case with the federal marijuana policy, it was essentially saying: “If you don’t like a law, screw it, don’t pay attention to it.” When you see police talking about how good legalization is or would be they are typically retired and are on the LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) payroll, in other words, they are getting paid to say that stuff. Ask the cops actually on the ground in states with commercial THC what they think.
I promised a soapbox message so here it is: DON’T GET SO HIGH AMERICA! Consider that the drugs you are doing really do harm to someone other than yourself and your loved ones. They contribute to violent cartels hell-bent on making quick and easy money any way they can. If that means kidnapping and torture, okay. If it means dumping meth into our communities, well all right, they don’t care. They want to drive gold-plated Hummers and will stop at nothing to keep that money pouring in. And sad as it is we will wait in line to give it to them.
What if we became a country that consumed very little in the way intoxicating substances? Right now, according to the American Public Health Association, we have 5 percent of the world’s population and consume two-thirds of the world’s drugs. If we were a place where “rites of passage” in college were things like learning to change a tire or do your own laundry rather than sitting in a dorm and dodging the RA’s while we got high. Where freedom of choice didn’t mean driving under the influence, and were so marginalized and unaccepted by our society that only the hardened addicts would dream of getting behind the wheel stoned. I love the idea that we might someday become a people who are so proud of our collective success and well-being that we spend our time and energy figuring out how to eradicate global warming or poverty. Where we could focus on protecting and caring for our disenfranchised and marginalized neighbors more than getting them to buy dope. A place where we no longer needed a dozen rehabs in each town. Nothing would make me happier than to work myself out of a job because in addition to there being less pain and suffering in the world, there would be less of a market for the cartels to exploit.