Pot is bulky and pungent.
That makes it difficult to conceal in, say, a suitcase or a truck. For that reason, marijuana traffickers tend to avoid legal ports or entrances, preferring instead to traverse the expanses of deserts and canyons where Border Patrol agents are often the only signs of human life. To the extent that other drugs
cross outside normal entry points, they are most often hitchhikers along for the ride with the weed. In 2013, for example, Border Patrol agents seized 274 pounds of marijuana for every one pound of other drugs.
So for those familiar with the history of drug smuggling, there was a dog that didn’t bark in Donald Trump’s early January Oval Office address, which was intended to frighten Americans into supporting a border wall and give him leverage to end the shutdown. While Trump described the southern border as “a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs,” he only specifically mentioned “meth, heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl”—all drugs that typically come in through formal points of entry. He did not speak of what has been, for most of living memory, the most smuggled item over the Mexican-American border: marijuana.
Pot, and the impoverished undocumented immigrants who often bring it, are no longer flowing across the border at the rate they once were. This decline has virtually nothing to do with expensive security innovations at the border and everything to do with legalization in the United States. If it were any other industry, one imagines the president would be delighted: When it comes to pot, customers prefer to buy American.
A CENTURY OF FECKLESSNESS
This story is from the April 2019 edition of Reason magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the April 2019 edition of Reason magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
THE LIBERTARIAN MIND OF DAVID BOAZ
Threats to freedom, Trump vs. Biden, and the wins libertarians can’t seem to acknowledge
DARE TO Fail
THERE’S NO SUCH thing as a universal millennial experience, but DARE comes close.
CULTURE WARRIOR IN CHIEF
THE MODERN PRESIDENCY IS A DIVIDER, NOT A UNITER. IT HAS BECOME FAR TOO POWERFUL TO BE ANYTHING ELSE.
Progress, Rediscovered
A NEW MOVEMENT PROMOTING SCIENTIFIC, TECHNOLOGICAL, AND ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS TO HUMANITY’S PROBLEMS EMERGES.
'Smoking Opium Is Not Our Vice'
AMERICA’S FIRST DRUG WAR WAS DRIVEN BY XENOPHOBIA AGAINST CHINESE MIGRANTS.
HOW CAPITALISM BEAT COMMUNISM IN VIETNAM
IT ONLY TOOK A GENERATION TO GO FROM RATION CARDS TO EXPORTING ELECTRONICS.
50 Years of D&D: You Can't Copyright Fun
THIS YEAR MARKS the 50th anniversary of the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), the granddaddy of tabletop role-playing games and one of the urtexts of nerd culture.
The Pupil Panopticon
BIG BROTHER—and Parent, and Teacher— are watching.
Congress Could Swipe Your Credit Reward Points
A PLOT TO kill credit card reward points has bipartisan buy-in, with lawmakers framing the effort as an attempt to curb stillstubborn inflation.
Regulators Killed a Lifeline for Roombas
IN JANUARY 2024, Amazon terminated its agreement to acquire iRobot, the company that manufactures the Roomba robot vacuum.