Six years after California legalized marijuana, the bodies keep piling up. Drug legalization has failed on every level. The legal drug business is collapsing. Cartels and gang members dominate the business. And open borders allowed them to bring massive numbers of laborers to boost their ranks.
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Gangsters, Money and Murder: How Chinese Organized Crime Is Dominating America’s Illegal Marijuana Market→
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A quadruple murder in Oklahoma shows how the Chinese underworld has come to dominate the booming illicit trade, fortifying its rise as a global powerhouse with alleged ties to China’s authoritarian regime.
Read MoreCalifornia’s Marijuana Paradise Lost→
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The black market in pot proliferates despite legalization.
Read MoreThieves are stealing California’s scarce water. Where’s it going? Illegal marijuana farms→
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As drought grips most of California, water thefts have increased to record levels. Thieves tap into hydrants, pump water from rivers and break into remote water stations and tanks.
Read MoreReasons Marijuana Legalization Seems To Be Failing→
/One of the biggest arguments made by cannabis advocates when trying to sell their spiel to politicians and voters was that legal weed would eliminate the black market. This, they said, would make it more difficult for children to get their hands on pot than in decades past while also generating significant tax revenue for the states. But the underground pot trade hasn’t really gone anywhere. In fact, it is only growing stronger now that criminal organizations have the luxury of being domestically based instead of running distribution from Mexico.
Read MoreStop the "green rush"→
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What I learned is that just because prohibition failed, it does not mean legalization is succeeding. Few of the most significant benefits legalization advocates promised were materializing. The thirst for profit and the interests of powerful corporations were swiftly sidelining small-scale producers and retailers, even as we filmed. The need to provide justice to the victims of the war on drugs has been lost in the “green rush.” It was the same old story: powerful corporate interests coopt a nominally progressive social movement and warp it to their own benefit.
Read MoreLegalizing Marijuana Has Created a Black Market Plaguing Riverside County→
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There is a new sheriff in Riverside County, and he is attacking the illegal marijuana cultivation that’s plaguing his community in Southern California. Sheriff Chad Bianco was elected in November 2018, and has taken on the growing black market with a vengeance.
Read More‘Getting Worse, Not Better’: Illegal Pot Market Booming in California Despite Legalization→
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It’s been a little more than a year since California legalized marijuana — the largest such experiment in the United States — but law enforcement officials say the unlicensed, illegal market is still thriving and in some areas has even expanded.
Read MoreForeign cartels embrace home-grown marijuana in pot-legal states→
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Foreign gangs are finding that black-market marijuana is profitable even in states that have legalized cannabis.
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