California Legalized Drugs. Cartels Took It Over.

 

by Daniel Greenfield  •  June 21, 2024 at 5:00 am

Six years after California legalized marijuana, the bodies keep piling up. Drug legalization has failed on every level. The legal drug business is collapsing. Cartels and gang members dominate the business. And open borders allowed them to bring massive numbers of laborers to boost their ranks. Pictured: San Bernardino County Sheriff's deputies and other law enforcement agents cut down cannabis plants during a raid on an illegal cannabis farm in Newberry Springs, in the western Mojave Desert of California on March 29, 2024. (Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

Six years after California legalized marijuana, the bodies keep piling up. Earlier this year, six men were murdered in the Mojave Desert. 

Four of the men had been burned after being shot with rifles. In 2020, seven people were killed at an illegal pot operation in Riverside County.

Violence like this was supposed to disappear after legalization. 

Legalization advocates argued that making the drug trade legal would end the grip of the cartels. 

Instead, the legal market has failed, and the cartels are taking over sizable parts of California and the rest of the country.

California's legal drug revenues have fallen consistently, as have those in other legal drug states including Colorado, whose model helped sell the idea that drug money would fix everything.

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