Pubdate: Mon, 23 Mar 2015
Source: Gazette, The (Colorado Springs, CO)
Copyright: 2015 The Gazette
Contact: http://www.gazette.com/sections/opinion/submitletter/
Website: http://www.gazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/165
Authors: Pula Davis, Wayne Laugesen, Christine Tatum
Series: Special report, 'Clearing the Haze:'

BLACK MARKET IS THRIVING IN COLORADO

A shrinking black market for marijuana was among the biggest benefits 
Colorado would realize from legalizing and regulating the drug, 
proponents of Amendment 64 promised in the months leading up to the 
state's historic decision to sanction pot's recreational use.

However, the black market is thriving - and growing in new, 
unforeseen ways as marijuana, highly potent THC concentrates and 
THC-infused foods and drinks produced in Colorado make their way 
across the country.

More than 40 states have reported seizures of Colorado marijuana and 
THC products, according to the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug 
Trafficking Area. The federally funded task force also reports that 
seizures involving Colorado marijuana bound for other states have 
risen nearly 400 percent, from 58 incidents in 2008 to 288 in 2013 - 
the year before Colorado's marijuana retail stores opened. That is 
consistent with Denver police records showing a nearly 1,000-percent 
spike in the amount of marijuana officers have seized - 937 pounds in 
2011 compared to a little more than 4 tons last year.

El Paso, Denver and Boulder counties are the top three sources for 
out-of-state marijuana trafficking, the HIDTA reports.

"Colorado is the black market for the rest of the country," HIDTA 
Director Tom Gorman said. "Now, the state just has a so-called legal 
market competing with the cartels, which haven't missed a beat. All 
ships rose with this tide."

Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman spoke in similarly stark 
terms when meeting with fellow state attorneys general at a 
professional conference in February. She lambasted marijuana 
legalization advocates' linchpin argument that marijuana producers 
and users would play by the rules of law and significantly wrest 
control of marijuana sales from drug traffickers and cartels.

"Don't buy that," she told the room. "The criminals are still selling 
on the black market. ...We have plenty of cartel activity in Colorado 
(and) plenty of illegal activity that has not decreased at all."

Mexican cartels remain big players in Colorado's illicit drug trade, 
working their turfs as usual. Only now, because American marijuana 
users increasingly are turning to the more potent forms of pot 
produced at home, the cartels are changing tactics to capitalize on 
other profitable drug sales. Mexican drug producers have shifted 
their crops from marijuana to opium poppies - which produce the black 
tar heroin that has ravaged many parts of the country - and they're 
ramping up production of methamphetamine. Last year, U.S. law 
enforcement agencies seized more than 2,100 kilograms of heroin 
coming from Mexico - almost triple the amount confiscated in 2009 - 
and about 15,800 kilograms of meth, up from 3,076 kilos in the same 
period, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency. The DEA estimates 
that about 90 percent of meth sold in the U.S. is produced in Mexico.

Americans' consumption of all three drugs - marijuana, meth and 
heroin - is on the rise, and Colorado's use rates are higher than the 
national average, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and 
Health, which is funded by a U.S. Department of Health and Human 
Services agency.

"The cartels are flooding our markets with cheap heroin and meth at 
the same time we're growing the numbers of marijuana users who might 
move on to try that next thing," said Ernie Martinez, national 
at-large director for the National Narcotic Officers' Associations 
Coalition. "Nothing good will come from this."

Colorado's black-market marijuana trade is hardly limited to cartels 
- - and state officials can't say how much marijuana flows through it. 
However, they estimate that only 60 percent of the marijuana consumed 
in Colorado is purchased through legal channels. The rest is sold 
through illicit operations that include back-door sales out of 
warehouses and other licensed facilities and home-grow operations far 
exceeding the six-plant limit Colorado law allows those 21 and older 
to cultivate.

Colorado's home-grow market is "minimally regulated" and a chief area 
of concern, said Lewis Koski, director of the state's Marijuana 
Enforcement Division. Yet home-grows take a back seat to the 
division's mandate to ensure that Colorado's 2,250 licensed marijuana 
facilities - businesses including edibles manufacturers and retail 
marijuana stores - follow the rules. Of the division's 55 employees, 
38 conduct criminal and compliance investigations, spending most of 
their time at licensed establishments. The office is requesting 13 
additional, full-time employees.

"One of our main enforcement priorities is specifically focusing in 
preventing or limiting the diversion of regulated marijuana outside 
the state of Colorado," Koski said.

Promises of increased enforcement ring hollow with law enforcement 
agencies in several other states. Sheriffs in neighboring Kansas and 
Nebraska have joined sheriffs from Colorado in filing a lawsuit 
against the state, alleging in part that Colorado's inability to keep 
black-market marijuana from flowing over its borders has put an 
economic burden on other states.

"We're running into more people with marijuana out of Colorado - just 
a regular, old traffic stop," said Dillon Mach, a sheriff's deputy in 
Custer County, Okla., who regularly patrols Interstate 40, a major 
east-west freeway stretching across the country. "They'll drive to 
Colorado, they'll pick it (marijuana) up, and they'll drive back to 
where they're from, whether that be Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri or Arkansas."

Traffickers are also flying the drug across state borders, former 
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers told The Gazette.

"I can't talk details, but there's some cases in the pipeline that I 
think will come to fruition in the next month or so that will 
indicate just how much marijuana is going straight out of grow 
operations in Colorado to regional airports and being flown to other 
states," he said.

Then there's the black-market marijuana that stays in Colorado - much 
of it falling into the hands of the very people legalization 
proponents said regulation would protect: youths. Marijuana use among 
Colorado adolescents is among the highest in the country, the state's 
public schools are reporting record numbers of marijuana-related 
problems, and healthcare providers say diversion of the drug from 
legal recreational and medical buyers to underage users is common. 
One study conducted by researchers at the University of Colorado 
found that about 74 percent of teens reported using marijuana they 
had obtained from a medical-marijuana license holder.

[sidebar]

Day 2: Marijuana and crime

Proponents of Amendment 64 said legalizing recreational sales and use 
of marijuana would stifle the black market in Colorado. That is not 
the case; crime statistics indicate we have more to learn about the 
long-term effects of legal pot on public safety and other concerns.

Data indicate there is new black market trafficking across the 
country as a result of legalized pot sales in Colorado. Other safety 
concerns surrounding concentrates and their manufacture are 
consequences of legalization that were never anticipated.

About the series

After the first year of recreational pot sales, The Gazette takes a 
comprehensive look at the unintended consequences of legalizing sales 
and use of recreational marijuana.

Day 1: Colorado has a fragile scheme for regulating legal marijuana 
and implementing a state drug prevention strategy.

Day 2: One of the suppositions about legalizing pot was that 
underground sales would be curtailed, but officials say there is 
evidence of a thriving black market.

Day 3: One teen's struggle to overcome his marijuana addiction shows 
how devastating the drug can be for younger, more vulnerable users. 
And employers face new workplace issues.

Day 4: Amid the hoopla about recreational marijuana sales, the 
medical marijuana industry is flourishing and has its own set of 
complicated concerns.

RECENT BUSTS

Last year, about 148,000 pounds of marijuana were sold in Colorado's 
regulated retail shops and medical dispensaries, along with 4.8 
million edible products, according to a recent report by Colorado's 
Marijuana Enforcement Division. How much was sold in the black market 
is unknown, but some recent busts with Colorado ties have been big:

In November, three people - two from Summit County and a third from 
New Mexico - were arrested in Tennessee after investigators found 
them with 425 pounds of what the Metropolitan Nashville Police 
Department called "high-grade marijuana from Colorado" valued at $1.7 
million, along with nearly $355,000 and 17 cellphones.

In January, two men from the metro Denver area were arrested after a 
routine traffic stop in South Carolina and found with 168 pounds of 
marijuana with a street value of around $900,000. The marijuana was 
believed destined for Charlotte, N.C., according to news reports.

In January, Pueblo police responded to a UPS facility after being 
alerted to a suspicious package. Inside: $58,000 of high-grade pot 
and $5,000 worth of marijuana edibles bound for San Angelo, Texas. 
Police say 23-year-old Johnny Wolfe was trying to ship the package to 
his home in San Angelo; he was later arrested by authorities in his 
home city and extradited to Pueblo to face charges.

Earlier this month, brothers Gideon Barker, 19, and Seth Rhoades, 21, 
of Wisconsin were charged with drug conspiracy after police 
investigated a 45-pound marijuana bust. Police say Barker paid 
drivers to travel to Colorado to pick up large quantities of 
marijuana and take it to Wisconsin. Authorities found more marijuana, 
cash, drug paraphernalia, marijuana edibles and a document titled 
"Dos and Don'ts When Making a Run to Colorado" at Barker and Rhoades' home.
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