A recent seizure of 1,800 pounds of California-grown marijuana in Georgia made national headlines and undermines a central argument touted by supporters of commercialization: that legalization will eliminate the illicit market for marijuana. This, of course, has shown not to be true.  

Following the seizure, Gary Long, the sheriff of Butts County, Georgia, said “here is the reality: the black market isn’t going away.” While the seizure in Georgia was the latest reminder of this dynamic, it is not an anomaly: 

• In July, law enforcement officers in Oregon, which legalized recreational marijuana in 2015, “discovered approximately 25,000 marijuana plants hidden inside pear orchards, 16,000 pounds of usable cannabis and 1,470 plants in five hoop-style greenhouses while serving a search warrant Tuesday at a black-market cannabis grow.”

• In May, ProPublica reported that officials in Colorado, which voted to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012, found that the regulated marijuana industry was illegally converting hemp into marijuana, which had the effect of “helping facilitate the diversion of high-grade marijuana out of Colorado and into the black market in other states.”

• Likewise, in May, the New York Post reported that the illicit market for marijuana in New York, which legalized recreational marijuana in 2021, was estimated to be 10 times greater than the “legal” market.

Sheriff Long cautioned that “we should learn from the experiences of states that have already gone down this road instead of repeating the same mistakes and then spending years trying to fix them.” Indeed, federal and state-level policymakers should learn how the legalization of marijuana has failed to eliminate the illicit market for marijuana in states as disparate as California, Oregon, Colorado, and New York. 

• Day Twelve: A Sheriff From Marijuana’s Epicenter Tells the Court Legalization Never Ended the Crime
• Economist Acknowledges the Shortfalls of Legalization
• White House warns about the harms of commercial marijuana
• House hearing offers key insights into how legal weed helps China