Strong black-market pressure is threatening the effort of New York state to regulate and tax recreational marijuana. The marijuana is smuggled through bushels of cannabis, the mail, secretly grown on unkempt public land and now international drug traffickers are aiming for New York’s insatiable want for marijuana.
The scope of marijuana criminality is in itself difficult to grasp as authorities raid and a bust weed grows from home-based operations in the suburbs to backwood cannabis patches in New York.
The Economics Behind The Marijuana Black-Market
Authorities are almost sure that smuggling of drugs will continue even after legalization spreads because the black-market will always have undercut prices. This means that there will be a lot of attention to the cartels in Mexico and illegal grow in states like Colorado. these are the main perpetrators to churn out cheaper marijuana that te highly taxed and regulated legal marijuana establishments.
Governor Andrew Cuomo and other politicians are worried that the cost competition among the legal marijuana states and businesses will have people crossing borders to purchase pot. This will lead to diminished tax revenues for the states and a violation of federal law which bans interstate smuggling.
New York has proven to have the highest appetite for marijuana making it the perfect place for a thriving marijuana black-market. Manhattan D.A Cyrus Vance Jr who us a marijuana legalization advocate is concerned about the growing black-market pot.
“One explanation used often for the legalization of recreational marijuana sales is that it will cripple the black market, however, five years after the first recreational store opened in Colorado the black market continues to thrive,” Vance wrote in a 2018 report.
Authorities and lawmakers still contend that the black-market will dry up easily if marijuana was legalized across the country. However, the appetite for illegal marijuana has been pinpointed to most adults who want to avoid paying taxes and age-restricted minors.
