More Colorado pot is flowing to neighboring states
Marijuana is flowing into the black market and out of Colorado in greater quantities than ever before, law enforcement officials say.
It’s going by car and by bus. It’s being packed up and shipped through the mail. It’s being found, in small amounts and large bundles, as far away as Illinois, New York and Florida.
Earlier this year, 42 pounds of high-grade, vacuum-sealed marijuana flew into Atchison, Kansas, in a small red-and-white airplane. Acting on a tip, a team of law enforcement officers pounced on the plane immediately after it landed, seized the marijuana and put four Colorado residents into handcuffs.
“I think they thought they were going to sneak in,” Atchison’s police chief, Mike Wilson, said recently.
The DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center reported that, for 2012, 3½ tons of Colorado marijuana that was destined for other states was seized by law enforcement agencies across the country. (AP file)