Cannabis seedlings for sale in California, on May 12, 2021. Photo / Max Whittaker, The New York Times
In California, the legalisation of recreational marijuana has had many consequences, including the boom in boutique dispensaries, the proliferation of edibles, and increasing questions around the health effects for some users.
Add to the list a more unexpected effect, far from the industrial greenhouses of Northern California.
There’s an illicit export market for so-called Cali weed in Britain, where cannabis remains illegal.
California-grown marijuana, which has developed a reputation for potency and high quality, is so popular that it is being smuggled in suitcases from America with minimal attempts to hide it, according to British law enforcement officials.
Officials have intercepted a steady flow of cannabis-filled suitcases loaded onto passenger flights from the US, with an average of five seizures a month this year.
The drug is often vacuum-packed in plastic bags and crammed inside suitcases taken on commercial flights as checked baggage.
“What we’re seeing is Californian weed, which demands a price premium in the UK,” Paul Pantry, a senior officer at the National Crime Agency, where he oversees Britain’s border security issues, told the New York Times.
“The different legal position around cannabis has been exploited by criminal gangs who see the dollar signs of the profit margin they can make by bringing that cannabis to the UK, where there’s a very big market for it.”
Andrew DeAngelo, a dispensary owner in Oakland, California, and an industry adviser, said the reason for the demand is obvious: “California cannabis is the best cannabis in the world”.
The plant has been grown for decades in California, and its cultivation accelerated after partial legalisation in 1996, DeAngelo said in a phone interview, with breeders competing to develop new strains.
“Because of the growing climate here and all the other advances we have with talent and technology, we produce the highest-potency cannabis,” he added. “People want things that are high quality.”
British dealers are advertising Californian marijuana online at prices far above those of cannabis grown elsewhere.
One account on the Telegram messaging app advertising Cali weed in Britain offered a “menu” of 32 strains, listing prices from £200 pounds ($460) to £350 pounds per ounce.
“It’s really top-grade,” the account operator wrote. “All our strains are Cali-imported and of very good quality.”
Another Telegram account offered 27 strains of Cali weed for £420 an ounce, saying they contained a high level of THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient in the plant. “It really hits different,” the message said.
The increased presence of THC in a form of cannabis known as skunk in Britain caused the government to move the drug from the lowest level of illegal categorisation, Class C, to Class B in 2009, citing concerns over the “onset of psychotic illness and the increased risk to mental health from the use of stronger cannabis”.
The possession of cannabis can be punished with a maximum five-year prison sentence in England and supplying or importing with up to 14 years of imprisonment.
Rob Ralphs, a criminology professor at Manchester Metropolitan University in northern England, works on a publicly funded drug safety project that has been analysing samples of Cali weed from volunteers and police.
He said that the type of cannabis traditionally sold in Britain had THC levels of 3% to 5%, while skunk is normally found to have 10% to 20%. Cannabis sold as Cali weed has far higher levels of THC, he said, up to 40%.
Ralphs first heard young people in Manchester talking about Cali weed in 2018 but said he did not see it emerge in his own research of drug markets until 2020, by which time it was seen as a “premium product” and was in high demand.
Previously, “most young people would just buy standard weed, bud or skunk from a local dealer.There was nothing like the range of strains and the potency that we see now.”
Cali weed is commonly sold in brightly coloured packets with cartoonlike designs, Ralphs said, although he doubts that all sellers are honest about their products’ origins.
“If you’re a British dealer and you’re doing a home grow in your bedroom or in a warehouse, you can package it in a bag that’s costing you a few pence and double the profit,” he added.
US Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that it was enforcing laws that prohibit the export of marijuana using a combination of intelligence, international co-operation and spot checks on suitcases.
An unknown quantity of cannabis is being smuggled into Britain in “increasingly brazen” ways, Pantry said.
Whereas smugglers would previously try to conceal drugs, the agency’s officers are now finding suitcases packed full of cannabis in clear bags, with “no attempts to conceal the drugs” beyond an occasional layer of clothing, he added.
Pantry said that similarities in the sizes of suitcases, the packaging methods and common US airports of origin suggest that the cannabis is being exported as an “industrial operation” by multiple internationally connected groups.
People may be offered large payments or free holidays to serve as couriers, Pantry said, and some may be misled about what is inside the suitcases.
“They’re increasingly people from all walks of life — young people, students,” he added.
“We do see people with criminal histories doing it, of course, but we see lots of people who’ve never been in trouble in any way before.”
Among the couriers that the National Crime Agency said had been caught smuggling cannabis from the US to Britain were a construction worker from Pennsylvania and a St Louis clothing boutique owner who said she had been given the luggage by someone else and believed it contained clothing.
Airport scanners for checked baggage are designed to prioritise physical security threats, like weapons and explosives, and while sniffer dogs and manual searches are effective to detect drugs, such measures cannot be used at scale, Pantry said.
“These people are getting on a commercial airplane with everyone else at the airport and going through customs like everyone else,” he added. “It’s hidden in plain sight.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Lizzie Dearden
Photographs by: Max Whittaker
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