1 month ago
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(NewsNation) — Chinese and Mexican transnational transgression organizations are trafficking marijuana to states wherever recreational usage is inactive illegal, keeping the black market live and booming.
This isn’t conscionable astir tiny turn operations anymore.
According to the DEA’s 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment, implicit the past 10 years, Chinese and Mexican transnational transgression organizations person turned the legalization question into a multi-billion-dollar achromatic market, exploiting escaped authorities laws to acceptable up amerciable grows and postulation high-potency marijuana crossed the country.
Criminal groups are buying up onshore — indoor and outdoor — to cultivate marijuana acold beyond ineligible limits successful Oklahoma and California, among others.
According to a erstwhile California Wildlife Department lieutenant, galore of these operations trust connected trafficked, undocumented immigrants to enactment the grows, often nether threat.
“[They are] bringing successful Mexican nationals, bringing successful Chinese immigrants arsenic well, and fundamentally bringing them successful arsenic the labour unit wrong these bureau sites, promising them payment," retired Lt. John Nores, formerly of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told NewsNation.
"Not paying these guys, benignant of extorting and keeping them around, truly not truly against their will,” Nores added.
In 2023, NewsNation embedded with Riverside County Sheriff's Marijuana Eradication Team, targeting Chinese amerciable turn sites successful the deserts, wherever neighbors were excessively frightened to permission their spot and deputies were outnumbered by organized criminals.
The DEA says these illegal growers often run successful states wherever marijuana is ineligible but skip licensing oregon usage falsified documents. If they are caught, small to nary situation clip is common, allowing them to battalion up and move.
In 2024, Oklahoma unsocial accounted for two-thirds of DEA's full marijuana seizures. But that doesn’t mean each the drugs originated there; galore were caught successful transit, being moved from turn states to achromatic marketplace destinations.
