One Buy American Program That Actually Works or, How U.S. Pot Is Killing Mexican Cartels

Nick Gillespie | October 7, 2009

Via blogger, film critic, and novelist extraordinaire Alan Vanneman comes this true story of "free-market forces" in action:

Almost all of the marijuana consumed in the multibillion-dollar U.S. market once came from Mexico or Colombia. Now as much as half is produced domestically, often by small-scale operators who painstakingly tend greenhouses and indoor gardens to produce the more potent, and expensive, product that consumers now demand, according to authorities and marijuana dealers on both sides of the border.

The shifting economics of the marijuana trade have broad implications for Mexico's war against the drug cartels, suggesting that market forces, as much as law enforcement, can extract a heavy price from criminal organizations that have used the spectacular profits generated by pot sales to fuel the violence and corruption that plague the Mexican state.

Read more in the Wash Post.

Comments

Hugh Akston|10.7.09 @ 9:42AM|#

I wonder what the Venn diagram of locavores and regular pot smokers would look like.

|10.7.09 @ 3:40PM|#

There's alot of overlap, as pot smoker's will eat what's closest to the couch.

Xeones|10.7.09 @ 9:47AM|#

I wonder what the Venn diagram of locavores and regular pot smokers would look like.

Have you ever thought about a Venn diagram... i mean, really thought about it?

Spartacus|10.7.09 @ 9:51AM|#

Have you ever drawn a Venn diagram...on weed?

TallDave|10.7.09 @ 9:52AM|#

I remember back in college in the mid-90s, if you wanted crap weed full of seeds you could buy the cheap Mexican schwag. The decent stuff was always domestic, usually indoor where pollination wasn't a problem.

|10.7.09 @ 10:20AM|#

Drugs are bad.

And Venn was a racist.

CB

MP|10.7.09 @ 10:31AM|#

suggesting that market forces, as much as instead of law enforcement

Fixed.

FFS, Jacob's been beating the drum forever that the free market will kill the Cartels. And MSM is just now kinda cluing in on that, with huge caveats still to the police state?

Mrs. C.|10.7.09 @ 10:31AM|#

Homegrown always beats Mexi-regs. I always felt better supporting local business :)

Abdul|10.7.09 @ 10:39AM|#

USA! USA! USA!

|10.7.09 @ 10:54AM|#

Some of the best pot I ever had was Mexican - bona fide Oaxacan - but that was back in the early '80s.

Damn near everything since has been American-grown.

USA! USA! USA!

Mexican Drug Lord|10.7.09 @ 11:09AM|#

¡Se llevaron a mi trabajo!

|10.7.09 @ 11:17AM|#

So maybe this will spur the Mexicans to increase the quality of their product.

T|10.7.09 @ 11:55AM|#

So maybe this will spur the Mexicans to increase the quality of their product.

Win-win, right?