The growing legalization of cannabis in the US is forcing Mexico’s drug cartels to rethink their illicit business model, turning to opium poppy plantations and domestic pot consumption, experts say.
US residents have been legally allowed to use cannabis in the US capital since late last month, joining Washington State and Alaska, while Oregon is to follow suit in July.
A total of 23 US states have legalized the drug for medical use, and opinion polls show that a slim majority of US voters favor legalization.
The changes in the world’s biggest drug market appear to have prompted the criminal organizations producing narcotics in Mexico to switch strategies.
“As [US] domestic production increases, this will affect production in Mexico,” National Autonomous University of Mexico security expert Javier Oliva told reporters.
Drug cartels “will seek to increase their exports to Europe and the opportunities for consumption within the country,” he said last week at a presentation of a report by the International Narcotics Control Board, a UN agency.
With US residents now able to grow their own cannabis in many places, one market the cartels appear to be tapping is the growing consumption of heroin in the US.
Oliva said the number of opium poppy fields has surged by 300 percent in the past five years in Mexico’s southwestern state of Guerrero, one of the nation’s most violent regions, where 43 students were allegedly slaughtered by a police-backed gang in September last year.
The scarlet blossoms are also popping up in the north, including in the state of Durango, which forms a “Golden Triangle” of drug plantations with the neighboring regions of Chihuahua and Sinaloa.
Poppy fields outnumber marijuana plantations by 3-1, Mexican military commander Adolfo Dominguez said in Durango.
“The criminals have obviously seen an improvement in this type of cultivation, and they also pay attention to the demand factor,” Dominguez told reporters.
Heroin consumption in the US has surged due to tighter controls of prescription opioid drugs, International Narcotics Control Board member Alejandro Mohar said.
“Opiate-dependent drug users are increasingly turning to heroin, which is typically easier to source and cheaper than prescription opioids,” the board’s report says.
“Law enforcement authorities in the region have also identified significant increases in heroin purity,” it says.
The US heroin market was worth an estimated US$27 billion in 2010, but marijuana is a more lucrative business, worth US$41 billion that same year, according to US government figures.
The US has a huge appetite for marijuana. More than 1,000 tonnes of marijuana are seized along the US-Mexico border every year, the report says, citing US Drug Enforcement Administration figures. The cannabis confiscated by US customs authorities represented 94 percent of worldwide seizures in 2013.
With some people in the US now able to grow their own, higher-quality marijuana in some places, Mexican drug cartels are likely look to sell their cannabis to local consumers, experts said.
Cannabis now ranks third after alcohol and tobacco in a Mexican government ranking of “drugs of impact” that require some kind of medical treatment, Mexican National Commission Against Addictions Raul Martin del Campo said.
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