Marijuana Cartels Find a Home in Colorado

A commercial marijuana grow operation. Photo: Shutterstock

Colorado has some lax laws on growing and selling marijuana, which has apparently led to a number of cartels from around the country setting up shop there. They can grow legally, although they still tend to do so illegally, and then ship their product to other parts of the country for further distribution and sale.

But because Colorado legalized marijuana for recreational use in 2014, it has become an apparent hotbed for conspiracies and the focal point of DEA and other federal investigations. "If you combine the legalization of marijuana and you combine that there are no regulations for the legalization of marijuana outside Colorado, it becomes an attractive criminal enterprises," said Jorge Duque with the Colorado Department of Law.

The federal government, which still views marijuana as an extremely dangerous drug, has made no secret about being unhappy with states like Colorado and Washington, which have taken medical marijuana one step further and legalized it for recreational use.

That legalization has not created more criminal cartels, nor has it made it harder to combat them. Most large organizations still grow illegally even in Colorado, because they need to produce much larger crops that they could by growing legally, and because illegal growing operations don’t pay taxes or follow other laws.

Increasingly, as Americans grow ever more accepting of recreational marijuana and support its legalization, many believe the obvious answer to preventing the development of cartels like these is to just legalize the drug nationwide.

Prohibition did not prevent people from making or drinking alcohol; it simply led to the creation of organized crime dedicated to alcohol. When Prohibition ended, so did the gangs that made and smuggled hooch. They simply stopped having a role to fill, since companies could once again produce beer and liquor, and distribute it legally.