Thanks to states like Colorado and Washington–along with medical marijuana pillars like California–America has enough homegrown weed that no one wants what Mexico sold for decades. Thus, Mexican farmers once valuable cash crop of cannabis has become nearly extinct, as the demand for the stuff no longer exists.
In response, Mexican cartels have reportedly shifted their primary focus to distributing harder drugs like heroin and meth. Furthermore, Mexican farmers have begun to burn their marijuana fields to make way for poppy fields.
Business Insider references an anonymous source from Tuesday’s World Economic Forum in Switzerland as the source for its report. And according to that source, someone with deep knowledge of the U.S.-Mexico border proclaimed that marijuana is out and heroin will soon take its place for Mexican cartels:
They’ve decided there is more money in burning down their crops down and planting something else instead. [Business Insider]
Likewise, the marijuana farms that once grew mostly low-grade cannabis will be transformed into poppy fields. Once harvested, the opium poppies are used to make heroin.Once that heroin is made, the substance then crosses the border and seeps through American soil. This news clearly shows that marijuana legalization can curb marijuana black market and that Mexican cartels had to find a new cash crop to cover the losses from weed.
Unfortunately, that cash crop kills.