The bulk of Colorado marijuana actuality bedeviled en avenue to added states through the U.S. mail has added than quadrupled back 2010 and was destined for added states than before, according to a new address by a federally adjourned biologic assignment force.
Postal inspectors bedeviled added than 493 pounds of pot from bales in 2013, up from 57 pounds in 2010, the year afterwards medical marijuana dispensaries proliferated in Colorado, according to the abstracts appear this ages by the Rocky Mountain Aerial Intensity Biologic Trafficking Area.
Just 15 bales were apprenticed for 10 states in 2010, compared to the 207 accoutrements destined for 33 states in 2013. Top destinations were Florida, Maryland and Illinois, the address states.
Colorado legalized marijuana for all adults over 21 in 2012. The report, based on advice from the United States Postal Inspection Service, doesn't accommodate abstracts for the aboriginal six months of 2014, back recreational pot shops opened in the state. The Postal Service in Denver has denied requests from The Associated Press for the aforementioned data.
The fasten in pot seizures is a assurance not of added proactive postal investigations but that added bodies are aircraft pot through the mail, said Tom Gorman, administrator of Rocky HIDTA, a arrangement of law administration organizations in four western states that allotment advice on drug-running patterns. It releases a annual address about marijuana amends as allotment of its work.
Despite actuality acknowledged in Colorado, federal law maintains marijuana use and sales are illegal. Because the Postal Service is a federal agency, application it to move marijuana — alike aural states area it is acknowledged — is a crime.
Denver advocate Brian Vicente, who helped address the pot law, said the arising of Colorado marijuana into added states is a austere affair that voters agreed should abide illegal. But he was agnostic of the HIDTA report, which he said promotes prohibition.
The U.S. Justice Department said it would abide marijuana sales in Colorado and Washington as continued as the pot didn't cantankerous accompaniment lines. But federal authorities rarely accompany cases involving small-scale marijuana smuggling.
A agent for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver said some cases abide beneath investigation.
"We're declared to annihilate the atramentous market, but we've become the atramentous bazaar for so abounding states," Gorman said. "It's all about authoritative money for best of these people. I accelerate you marijuana or edibles, and you pay me for it, and I can get a lot added money by trafficking it to states area it is illegal."
He said bodies are additionally sending it through clandestine couriers like FedEx and UPS, which don't absolution statistics on their seizures. Neither aggregation would animadversion on how it investigates such cases.
Postal inspectors haven't afflicted their administration access admitting the "uptick in marijuana abrogation the state," said Denver-based U.S. Postal Inspector Pamela Durkee, who would not elaborate. She said the focus charcoal on disappointment and dismantling all-embracing enterprises and organized groups that accelerate aerial volumes of pot and narcotics.
"We ambition we had a few added bodies, but we don't see the challenges as actuality a lot altered than they accept been in the past," Durkee said.
Gorman said abundant of the actionable exports appear from bodies who abound their own plants either at home or in warehouses. Accompaniment law allows adults to abound up to six plants, admitting doctors can acclaim added for medical patients. The complexities of the law accomplish it difficult for badge to accomplish high-volume grows.
Among the cases listed in the report:
—A Lakewood, Colorado, man who badge say acclimated his address and a barn to abound abundant high-grade marijuana for his abomination arena to accelerate amid 24 and 60 pounds anniversary ages to out-of-state customers.
—A Boulder, Colorado, man who beatific added than 14 pounds of pot to places including Wisconsin, Massachusetts and California.
—A burghal Denver biologic assignment force bedeviled about 20 pounds of pot from three FedEx bales apprenticed for Illinois and Kansas.