Custom and border officials have seized nearly 15,000 pounds of cannabis at the Canada-U.S. Michigan border this year, MLive reports. The incidents are reportedly up seven times from 2018 when just 2,189 pounds were confiscated.
“It’s fascinating that you can sit there and you look into parts of rural Ontario from Michigan, you can look across the water, whether it’s Lake St. Clair or the Detroit River, you can see in the middle of the night the glow of these greenhouses that are basically just mass producing this stuff on a daily basis.” — Homeland Security Investigations Assistant Special Agent in Charge Matthew Stentz, via MLive
Like on the southern border, cannabis smuggled across the northern border is not destined for the nearby area. Although cannabis is legal in Michigan, most of the cannabis crossing the border is headed south where cannabis is still illegal in places like the Carolinas and Georgia, according to the report.
“With Michigan being a recreationally legal state, anyone bringing drugs from Canada will probably be best served to those drugs in a state where they can maximize their profit,” DEA Detroit Field Division spokesperson Brian McNeal said. “Logic would suggest that not all if any of those drugs are destined for the state of Michigan.”
Authorities say smugglers are using large trucks, individuals’ cars, and even mini-submarines to bring Canadian cannabis into the U.S., but it’s not just a Michigan issue according to the report. Another hot spot on the Canada-U.S. border is Buffalo, New York where authorities seized 41,000 pounds of cannabis this year, up from 1,071 in 2016.
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