Monday, October 19, 2009

Mexican Cartels are Taking over US Marijuana Production

By Sylvia Longmire

Life is getting a bit harder for Mexican drug lords these days. Not only do they have to worry about the Mexican military and U.S. law enforcement tripping up their drug trafficking efforts.

Now they have some supply problems from a place they might not have expected – competition from U.S.-based marijuana producers.

Several media outlets have published recent reports regarding U.S. marijuana farms, known as “grows.”  A Washington Post article from Oct. 7 said that thousands of mom-and-pop grows in the U.S. are threatening cartel profits, partly because of recent changes in state laws that allow the legal use of medical marijuana.

So what’s a Mexican cartel to do? Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), Mexican cartels have also moved to increasingly cultivate marijuana on public lands in the United States. McClatchy News recently published the following:

“There is no doubt” that three big marijuana fields uncovered this month in Ellis and Navarro counties, in Texas, “have a tie to the border and a Mexican drug cartel,” said a drug investigator for the Texas Department of Public Safety. “They brought the tenders up here from Mexico to do the work.”

The Washington Post article further stated that the Mexican traffickers’ illegal use of public lands is a response to the dramatic increase in U.S. production, according to authorities and growers. In the northern woods of California, illegal immigrants hired by well-heeled Mexican “patrones,” or bosses, lay miles of plastic pipe and install oscillating sprinkler systems for clandestine fields that produce a cheaper, faster-growing “commercial grade” of marijuana.

After establishing sophisticated farming networks in California, Washington and Oregon, the Mexican traffickers are shifting operations eastward to Michigan, Arkansas and North Carolina, federal agents say.

If this were only a regular business move, then there might not be so much cause for concern. But Mexican growers are fiercely protective of their drug profits, which means yet another brand of cartel-related violence is now in the U.S.

The NDIC says Mexican growers reportedly employ armed guards to protect both indoor and outdoor grows. Growers may warn off intruders with flares and use pits filled with punji stakes, fishhooks dangling at eye level, guard dogs, or trip wires linked to shotguns, grenades, or other explosives.

In Fresno County, California, authorities once found a grenade with a trip wire strapped to a propane tank. Law enforcement has confiscated semiautomatic weapons, night-vision binoculars, and bulletproof vests from growers.

In many cases, it has been difficult for law enforcement agencies to positively identify individuals managing the grows and their associations with Mexican cartels. One could make the assumption that grows in certain states are ultimately run by cartels in closest proximity, but that might not be the case.

For example, national parks in northern California are a very popular site for marijuana grows, and hundreds of thousands of plants worth millions of dollars have been seized there in recent years. The Arellano Felix Organization (AFO) – and now a splinter faction run by rival Teodoro “El Teo” García Simental – is the dominant cartel in northern Baja California. It would make sense that the AFO directs most of the grows in California, but law enforcement authorities are still working to obtain concrete evidence confirming this.

Likewise, grows in Texas would be operated by associates of the Gulf cartel, Los Zetas, or the Juárez cartel under this logic, but at this point it’s hard to say for sure.

One thing that can be said is the increasing number of U.S. marijuana grows poses a real danger to law enforcement and the general public. The grows are well-defended and in remote forested areas. This makes detection and enforcement actions difficult in most circumstances.

The fact that many of these grows are in national parks means that any innocent hiker could stumble across one of them, and become victim to violent defense mechanisms.

It’s long been known that Mexican cartel distribution networks are entrenched throughout hundreds of U.S. cities. It was bad enough knowing that the end product was circulating everywhere. But now we have to worry about a growing domestic source run by foreign organized crime groups, and the violence associated with that expansion.

Mexican cartels have demonstrated time and time again their uncanny ability to adjust to changes brought on by law enforcement actions and market activity. They are already masters at trafficking drugs, whether by air, land (above and below), or sea. There is no reason to doubt they can become masters at producing them – and doing it well – in any country they choose.

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Sylvia Longmire is a former Air Force officer and Special Agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, where she specialized in counterintelligence, counterespionage, and force protection analysis. After being medically retired in 2005, Ms. Longmire worked for almost four years as a Senior Intelligence Analyst for the California State Terrorism Threat Assessment Center, providing daily situational awareness to senior state government officials on southwest border violence and significant events in Latin America. She received her Master’s degree from the University of South Florida in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, with a focus on the Cuban and Guatemalan revolutions. Ms. Longmire is currently an independent consultant and freelance writer.  Her website is Mexico's Drug War; she is a regular contributor to Examiner.com; and her email address is spooky926@gmail.com.