We don’t want this insanity to happen here – Bringing an illicit psychotropic toxin into the currents of trade fixes NOTHING, but only empowers the addiction for profit nightmare on more fronts, with taxpayer funded governments active participants int this public safety and public health nightmare.

Marijuana wars: Violent Mexican drug cartels turn Northern California into ‘The Wild West’

COVELO, Calif. — Mexican drug cartels are muscling in on America’s burgeoning multi-billion-dollar marijuana industry, illegally growing large crops in the hills and valleys of Northern California.

The state legalized marijuana in 2016 for adult recreational use, yet the black market continues to thrive with thousands of illegal grows. Criminal syndicates, in turn, are cashing in across the U.S. on the “green gold rush.”

Americans’ growing embrace of marijuana has given the cartels an avenue to expand their reach, employing the same vicious tactics they use to push out competitors in the illicit opioid trade.

It’s the Wild West. We’ve got people in gunfights on a regular basis over marijuana.

“And, the number of missing people is insane,” especially in the Emerald Triangle. “During grow season, people call the sheriffs’ offices up there looking for loved ones who may never be found.”

Headless bodies and murder victims

The sheriff said he doesn’t have enough deputies to safely serve a search warrant amid increasing violence.

A glimpse at what he’s dealing with: Christopher Wayne Gamble, who allegedly operated large illegal crops near the town of Willits, in central Mendocino County, is charged with murdering a 17-year-old boy and his father who came from Mexico seeking work, according to Mendocino County Superior Court records.

On a second property Gamble owns, detectives found the victims’ headless bodies in April in a ditch under a pile of tires that had been set on fire.

“It’s a punishment to the person who stepped out of line,” the sheriff said. “And a message to the next person: ‘Don’t step out of line.'”

*****

The Courier Journal spent a week in the valley town of Covelo and throughout Mendocino County, touring cattle ranches, permitted marijuana farms and a licensed dispensary and talking with conservationists, lawmakers, teachers, police and fire officials and tribal members.

Some gave differing opinions about marijuana and laws governing its crops, but all agreed that crime and related problems have only worsened with legalization.

The newspaper investigation found:

• Illegal growers are using dangerous chemicals from Mexico that poison animals and contaminate soil.
• Armed criminal networks set up illegal grows on federal land in national forests.
• Illegal cannabis used to make a nearly pure form of THC is linked to explosions that have burned children and killed adults.
• Some veteran lawmen surprisingly approved of legalizing marijuana federally as a way to cripple the black market. (For complete journal piece go to Courier-Journal )

The mind-boggling cognitive dissonance and out and out chaos this ‘let’s legalize weed and the black-market will disappear, and we’ll have a veritable cornucopia of funding from the taxed addiction for profit cannabis’ is, pardon the pun, breath taking!

To the point where, what little tax revenue that was being raised – and almost immediately lost on the bureaucracy enforcement of this new ‘market’ and the escalation public health and safety costs of this drug – is now being completely excised, and why? To ‘try and stop illegal market’! It beggars belief.

San Francisco Suspends Cannabis Tax To Combat Illegal Marijuana Sales

San Francisco supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved an ordinance to suspend the city’s Cannabis Business Tax through the end of next year, in an attempt to curb illegal marijuana sales. (For complete story CBS Broadcasting Inc. and Bay City News Service.)

As stated, we saw this emerging in all the key North American jurisdictions years ago, and it’s time policy and law-makers stopped listening to the pro-pot propagandists and cared for the people they were hired to care for – The taxpaying public.

For an evidence-based read go to “And Then There Were Three – Marijuana Markets, That Is” (A brief overview of the chaos of the Legal, Black and Grey Marijuana Markets: Focus on California, Canada & Colorado)

Dalgarno Institute Communications Team