Photo: John Moore / Getty Images
By: The Opinion Updated 19 Dec 2022, 0: 41 am EST
According to the CDC, marijuana is the most commonly used drug in the United States; 54.2 million people, or about 04% of the people in this country, used marijuana at least once in the 2015, with Texas being the gateway for illegal smuggling from Mexico.
According to an investigation by InSight Crime, the legalization of Marijuana being implemented at the state level in the United States forces criminal organizations in Mexico to adapt and seek new markets, while changing drug trafficking routes along the US-Mexico border.
Described the above, The marijuana trafficking landscape underwent major changes after both states legalized the drug, beginning with California in 2015 and continuing with Arizona in 2021. Marijuana also became fully legal in New Mexico in 2021.
As a consequence, Texas became the state with the highest record of marijuana seizures, a consequence of not having legalized the alkaloid and is closer to states that have not done so either.
According to data from the US Service Customs and Border Protection (CBP), last year seized more than 54, kilos of marijuana along the southern border of Texas, compared to less than 20 tonnes metrics in Arizona and California combined.
Meanwhile, Border Patrol agents in southern Arizona went from seizing more than 400 tons of marijuana in the fiscal year of 2015 only about 5, kilos in the fiscal year of 2021. Meanwhile, in California only half a ton of marijuana was seized in the fiscal year of 2021, a small fraction of the dozens of tons regularly seized than in previous years.
Marijuana trafficking through Texas is currently the path of least resistance for drug trafficking organizations attempting to reach US consumers who do not have access to legal marijuana.
However, What is concerning is that while drug trafficking groups have changed the routes of introduction of marijuana, they have also expanded into the growing and lucrative market for synthetic drugs.
This diversification into the mass production and trafficking of methamphetamine and the synthetic opioid fentanyl, is a market that moves billions of dollars in the United States and caused thousands of human losses.
Currently, and he consumption of fentanyl has increased worryingly in the United States and has triggered the alarm in that country, where overdoses caused by this drug have become a veritable epidemic. While shootings with firearms are the leading cause of death among children under 19 years, fentanyl is among adults of 19 a 45.
Read more:
Prosecutor charges six for alleged crimes ordered by the Mexican Mafia
2022Sexual Abuse of Female Inmates in Federal Prisons, a Real and Growing Scourge; there are more than 5, cases
Pentagon prepares plan to send Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine