Elderly Man Dies In Gunfire Exchange With Undercover Officers

News4Jax.com ^ | January 28th, 2007 | Staff

[Razz Barry]

In spite of all of the nonsense on the earlier part of the thread, still I felt that the "libertarian" retards were not truly stepping up to the plate. No longer. Excelsior!

How long have you worked in law enforcement?

[TKDietz]

"I think most marijuana is either grown inside the US or imported from Canada actually. I don't think Coca or Poppy grows very well in the Mexican climate."

Coca is not grown in Mexico. Opium poppy fields are grown there and Mexico is a major heroin producer. Our government at least seems to think a huge portion of the marijuana consumed in this country is also grown in Mexico, and THC potency numbers our government collects really make it doubtful that most marijuana on the market in this country is high grade marijuana grown in Canada or the United States. Average THC levels of all marijuana seized in this country are actually pretty low, less than 6%, and that's when they include all the super potent stuff they seize. That grown in Canada is predominantly indoor grown high powered stuff. From what I've read it averages in the neighborhood of 15% THC and some samples they've found are a good bit stronger than that. "Commercial grade" marijuana tends to be seedy compressed pot associated with Mexico. According to our government's data on potency of marijuana they seize "commercial grade" marijuana averages around 5% THC, considerably lower than high powered indoor grown sinsemilla or even the less potent outdoor grown sinsemilla grown here or in Canada, and only a little bit lower than the average of all marijuana seized, which indicates to me that the lion's share of that seized is in the "commercial grade" category. Mostly the commercial grade marijuana is grown in Mexico, but a portion of that that makes it here through Mexico is grown in other parts of Latin America or the Caribbean.

Most drugs come up here through Mexico, and Mexican organized crime are increasingly controlling wholesale distribution networks for drugs within this country. Mexico is a drug producing nation that happens to be the only other nation on our southern border. Several other Latin American countries also produce a lot of drugs and for the most part those drugs that make it here come up through the Mexican bottleneck and are smuggled into this country by Mexicans who control the smuggling routes.

I work as a public defender in a town on a major interstate highway and I've handled thousands of pounds worth of marijuana cases over the years where "drug mules" have been stopped carrying large loads of pot. It's always seedy compressed Mexican pot. I do not live in a border state and I would imagine that if I worked somewhere near the Canadian border I'd see some Canadian marijuana, but I doubt there are as many loads and I doubt the average weight of the loads is as high as it is with the cheapo seedy Mexican brickweed. You can easily fit two or three hundred pounds of highly compressed marijuana in the trunk of a car, but that weight in fluffy buds would take up considerably more volume. They don't "brick up" high priced marijuana because that would kill the value of the product.

I haven't looked at that numbers recently but I know our customs officers and law enforcement seize well over a thousand tons of marijuana coming from Mexico every year. Much of that grown in Canada is destined for the United States but still it is believed that Canadian marijuana makes up less than 5% of the marijuana found on U.S. markets. I couldn't say off the top of my head what the government estimate is on how much of the marijuana sold here comes from Mexico, but I think it's more than half. These estimates are really just educated guesses though and they vary considerably. The last government supply estimate I read on the amount of marijuana available on the market here in this country in a year was between 12,000 and 25,000 metric tons. I suppose it's pretty hard to come up with exact estimates when the product is illegal and all production and distribution is done in secret.