Flying with Cannabis
Your grandma might be a drug-smuggler
After seeing a story in the San Francisco Gate about a “ring” of drug smuggling thefts https://www.sfgate.com/cannabis/article/sfo-armed-robbery-uncovered-drug-smuggling-ring-18161928.php I fell I must recount my own experiences seeing how this actually came to be.
Flashback to Seattle, Washington eight years ago, with post-legalization already leading to rise of many interesting forms of crime, from your average armed-robbery of adult use stores, to the more people posting ads on craigslist offering to ship ganja to any non-legal state which usually was a cash first situation as it was often kids or foreign scammers looking for marks to take advantage of those stupid enough to commit interstate felonies. It was been a weird road for the criminal world.
Its an open secret in the cannabis industry that illicit market cannabis is being deviated to the non-legal states going back to the medical days, as your profit margins on wholesale amount were often 2x-4x depending on the receiving market and deals set up, many people now days will even admit to “shipping packs” or the act of using the federal United States Post Office (USPS) or private carriers to mail different amounts vacuum sealed green to more profitable region. This was always deemed as a safer method at least for the sender because often enough methods such as printed postage with stolen credit cards and non-CCTV watched drop locations could be used to evade the authorities.
A lot of the risk then fell on the receiver, who would be at risk of a “controlled buy” by law enforcement if the package was intercepted. By the late 2010’s it was pretty common for most shipments under 5 pound to just be seized by the post office with no follow up due to the volume of packages coming through not having enough resources to continue chasing down soft drugs crimes. I personally knew people stupid enough to ship unsealed bags under 28 grams to receive a letter from the USPS when caught stating the post offices guidelines and rules on cannabis being sent in the federal male system as a warning, not even a house visit (they should as it was cocaine trap house for a east coast gang member).
Along with influx in mailing of cannabis from the West coast, it became also common to meet folks who chose to take the cannabis back East in person for a multitude of reasons, weather that’s because it was a larger order in the 50-500 pound range using private airplanes, RVs, or even pack your own shipping containers then transported by a moving company, or smaller orders taken on trains, buses or car because they believed the local post office was on the take and would steal you load (ironic).
It seemed crazy at the time, but I had an acquaintance who would often visit me once a month from the “South” to pick up 2 Lbs. and fly back with just to pay for his travel costs and build up a local network for distribution. In my eyes it seemed to dangerous or risky to even attempt, but he swore by it, stating that he would even leave his bag outside the terminal for a short amount of time just to feign plausible deniability about not having his bag in his custody the entire time if ever caught. It then came to my attention later through other sources that this was actually common practice especially with the larger Asian gangs who had been moving into the cannabis space over the last decade, with the understanding that older grandmas were taking 5-10 Lbs. every trip with them back East, often not even attempting to hide the smell as they checked their bags for domestic flights.
So it isn’t very surprising that opportunity seeking individuals with access to the cargo hold on planes wouldn’t see a risk free chance to take from these smugglers as they wouldn't have any recourse, who would complain to the airlines about their cannabis being stolen? This is very interesting phenomenon to develop from the Federal prohibition and patch work of states enacting the laws for legalization. Its been known for a longtime that Federal agency’s have been pumping money to local and state law enforcement in order to fight inter-state commerce, along with the chance at making some bank on potential on civil forfeiture.
To quote a DEA agent I was told by a friend who had an unlucky run in with the feds on some cannabis related charges “We don’t care about the cannabis, just the money”.