Select Page

The White House has delivered an annual drug enforcement report to Congress that highlights a number of concerns from regional police partners about state-legal marijuana legalization—including what they believe are the implications for drug trafficking, environmental issues related to illicit grows and demand for high-potency THC products.

Advocates and experts have been critical of the past reports from the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program (HIDTA), which are not peer-reviewed and are facilitated through the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). They argue that the information is biased, given ONDCP’s statutory mandate to oppose efforts to legalize Schedule I drugs like marijuana.

While the key cannabis sections of the new 2022 report comprise a compilation of summaries from regional cohorts and are not a direct reflection of where ONDCP or the administration falls on the issue, the document doesn’t seek to push back on any specific narratives. It’s also being released a couple of months after President Joe Biden issued a mass cannabis pardon and directed an administrative view into marijuana’s federal scheduling status.

Still, it compiles a long list of law enforcement complaints about cannabis legalization.

The Northern California HIDTA, for example said in the report that illicit cannabis “remains readily available” in the region despite the state’s legalization law” and that “consequently marijuana use remains extremely high and prices remain stable.”

The California officials cited by the White House argue that state-level marijuana legalization “has likely invited more criminality connected to the production and transportation of the drug, especially by [drug trafficking organizations] and organized criminal groups” and that criminal groups “have created or partnered with ostensibly legal businesses to conduct illicit production and trafficking” in the state’s “highly accessible and lucrative cash-sales commodity.”

To read more, click on Marijuana Moment

Share via
Copy link