Drug Trafficking

Insight – Organized Crime in America (Part III of III)

Marijuana

Marijuana began and remains the most widely used and widely trafficked drug by volume in the Americas and the world. Production figures are difficult to determine because countries tend to measure production in different ways and there is an increasing amount of indoor production. The region’s top producer, the United States, measures by the number of plants. The second largest producer, Mexico, measures by hectare. The United States also appears to be one of the top indoor producers.

The only indoor production found outside of the United States in the region was in Argentina. The difficulty in measuring the amount of cannabis worldwide was evident in the most recent United Nations’ World Drug Report in which the organization estimated that it ranged between 200,000 and 641,800 hectares.

The greatest concentration of marijuana production in the region is from the northwestern Sierras in Mexico up through northwestern United States. Mexican production is concentrated in nine states: Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Durango. Guerrero, Nayarit, and Michoacán are the traditional production areas, but U.S. intelligence reports say that large Mexican organizations have shifted production to central and northern Mexican states of Sonora, Sinaloa and Durango in recent years to avoid increasing eradication efforts by the Mexican government and to get closer to the main consumption market, the United States.

Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) also operate large, outdoor fields in western United States, most notably in California, but increasingly in more northern states such as Oregon and Washington. The Mexican DTOs are also increasingly making connections to groups east of the Mississippi River.

In South America, the largest producers appear to be Bolivia and Paraguay. Colombia is also a major producer. In addition to shipping supplies to the United States and Europe, these countries supply a growing South American market.  

The potency of marijuana has also increased in recent years, giving the traffickers greater returns on fewer hectares. This includes Mexican traffickers who have developed sophisticated techniques such as using greenhouse seedlings, planting the seedlings before late April, separating the male from the female seedlings before pollination, and using fertilizer high in nitrogen.

Given the lack of knowledge about production, there are differing arguments as to how much money is in the marijuana business. A recent paper on cannabis in the United States said domestic production in the U.S. alone in 2006 was worth an estimated $35 billion. And some say that marijuana represents the Mexican DTOs largest source of income. 

Resources

• "National Methamphetamine Threat Assessment 2010," U.S. Department of Justice. (pdf)
• “World Drug Report 2010,” United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (pdf)
• “International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Volume I, 2010,” United States Department of State.
• “Domestic Cannabis Cultivation Assessment 2009,” United States National Drug Intelligence Center.