By many measures the border shared by the US and Mexico has served as ground-zero for the battle on hashish. It’s no secret that for a few years hashish, amongst different issues, was smuggled from Mexico into the US through varied entry factors alongside the nations’ shared border.
Beginning in 1996 the demand for hashish smuggled from Mexico into the US began to be impacted by home hashish reform within the U.S., with California turning into the primary state to move a medical hashish legalization measure in U.S. historical past.
Between 1996 and 2012 a number of different states additionally handed medical hashish legalization measures, lots of which concerned the launch of a regulated business, and in 2012 two states handed the nation’s first set of adult-use legalization measures. Each state-level business that launched within the U.S. additional decreased the demand for smuggled hashish from Mexico.
Hashish continues to be smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico, nonetheless, the speed of it taking place continues to dwindle, as mirrored by current seizure statistics from the US Border Patrol. Beneath is extra details about it through a NORML information launch:
Washington, DC: Federal regulation enforcement brokers are intercepting traditionally low portions of hashish on the southern border, in line with newly launched knowledge offered by the US Division of Homeland Safety, US Customs and Border Safety.
Federal statistics reveal that Border Patrol and Discipline brokers confiscated an estimated 155,000 kilos of marijuana on the US/Mexico border in 2022. That’s down nearly 50 % from 2021 totals and continues the dramatic decline in seizure quantity that started in 2013, when almost 3 million kilos of hashish had been confiscated on the southern border.
Some consultants have beforehand speculated that licensed retail entry to hashish merchandise, which started in Colorado and Washington in 2014 and is now out there in nearly half of all states, has considerably undercut demand for imported Mexican hashish.
In keeping with conclusions offered by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, “In US markets, Mexican marijuana has largely been supplanted by domestic-produced marijuana.”
Separate knowledge printed final yr by the Authorities Accounting Workplace and elsewhere signifies that interdiction efforts alongside the US border now sometimes contain the seizure of small portions of marijuana and no different managed substances.
Drug seizure statistics can be found on-line from the US Customs and Border Safety web site.
This text first appeared on Internationalcbc.com and is syndicated right here with particular permission.
