By M. Allister Greene
Brick weed. To some these words are unfamiliar, but in most of the United States this is the cannabis that has spread across the market to a huge percentage of consumers, but is thought to be the lowest grade and poorest example of cannabis. To most consumers the words “brick weed” are either representative of the only cannabis they know or find, or the herb they avoid at all cost. The amount of blood that has (metaphorically) stained it, and the money that it brings into a drug war that stretches past our borders and into the hands of criminals, makes it a product despised by many.
The majority of these warlords are tapeworms who just happen to have cannabis plantations. They are on such a large scale that both the people growing it, and the cannabis plants themselves, are treated like slaves. This trivializes the true nature of the cannabis plant, and what it is cherished for. These people remove all the beauty from the plants and the areas that they inhabit, while trying to rule through violence. They are tapeworms stretching past the fields they destroy with such ferocity, such cruelty, that they suck all decency from the people, culture and history, and make buying brick weed feel like a black mark on the soul.
These large scale grow operations use large amounts of chemicals—insecticides, herbicides, and chemical plant foods—that are often not considered safe for use in food production. When the cannabis plants are harvested, they are poorly inspected—if at all—for molds and other health concerning ailments, then dried and cured. During this stage, other issues can develop allowing the cannabis to degrade even further.
After all of this poor treatment, it just gets worse. They throw all of the cannabis plants into trash compactors, and some groups even make a shell around the marijuana by throwing all sorts of materials in with it—such as rubber from tires, old oil barrels, plastics, woods and other plant materials, and just about anything you can find in a landfill to cover up the smell of cannabis. Not all bricks are made the same, some have better weed, and some do take care of the product more than others. Then there are some that have extra less wanted ingredients, with every single corner cut during processing, making an end product that can barely be called cannabis. Many groups will throw in other material into the weed to create more weight, and randomly other things end up in the trash compactors (used to press the bricks) . After the cannabis has become one of the many brick weed forms, it moves on to the next stage, where even more violence takes places. This is when the smuggling begins.
Drug smuggling, of all varieties, goes on at the border of the United States and Mexico, with a large amount of the smuggling being done by gangs operating on an international level. Other drug smuggling, both small scale and large scale, is done by individuals or small groups that have found that the profit outweighs the dangers of moving the drugs. No matter whose hands are transporting it, the matter of getting it from Mexico to all the corners of the U.S. (and further), the smuggling starts to take major creative turns to get into the hands of the consumer.
Recently, one of the creative methods to be exposed was a catapult. Now there have been rumors of this for years, but the one caught was exceptionally close to the border and might have just been the only one to be poorly thought out. Other smugglers take the risk of using small airplanes; either landing to make the delivery, or dropping their cargo from the sky, which sometimes leads to news stories of duffle bags falling through roofs of houses or bags full of cannabis, or other drugs, being randomly found. Some smugglers will take bricks that are in a long and flat and fill the panels of cars, or fill their tires with bricks of weed to drive across the border check points.
Some smuggling operations turn to the underground methods of floating crates in sewers, or building tunnels that connect border cites. And some go underwater water—like the famous bust of a home-made submarine that was filled with drugs.
Drugs of all sorts get stuffed into items such as gas tanks, televisions, garden gnomes, and various animals—some of which are alive and fed, or surgically implanted with, bags of drugs. Building materials and household items like bathroom vanities and bedroom dressers, and even industrial waste containers, get lined and filled with bricks of weed and other drugs.
People often tape drugs to their bodies, have them surgically implanting, and the less than pleasant thought of plugging different body cavities. Some drugs are made into items or coated onto all sorts of products that come into the country, like toys, cosmetics, DVD cases, paper products, glasses, and even foods.
If something can be stuffed, made, or coated with drugs, someone has tried to use it in a smuggling scheme for one drug or another. Sometimes more valuable drugs get stuffed into another to make hired carriers think their load is worth less money. There is little honesty and loyalty in the employers and employees of the drug smuggling business.
Cannabis has been identified as one the largest cash crops in the world, and all the other drugs tag along to make criminals very rich. The money fuels wars and cruelty, along with corruption that has spread to all levels of law enforcement, including the DEA and the CIA, and politicians on all levels. The Mexican drug cartels use the money they make to buy weapons and run other criminal enterprises. They use it to corrupt people on all sides of the borders, and use violence to scare anyone that gets in their way. Many journalist and government officials, as well as many civilians, have been mistaken for rival gang members or law enforcement, or just caught in the crossfire, are killed by the dozen on weekly basis.
Just recently, the shooting of three Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer (resulting in one death) has caused outrage in police, resulting in more raids and deaths in the past few weeks—in the name of the War on Drugs. Being that this is one of the first deaths of an American agent in relations to drugs in recent years, the first response from top officials was that this made it personal. The raids keep picking up speed and ferocity across the globe at the hands of American agents out for vengeance, rather than justice.
As the facts of the investigation keep surfacing, the irony in the death of the agent is that the gun used in the shooting turns out to have been bought from a gun store in Texas, the state of the fallen officer, Jaime Zapata. This calls into question the relaxed American gun laws, and how often massively dangerous guns end up in the hands of the most dangerous criminals the world has the offer.
The warlords of the Mexican drug cartels will remain as long as prohibition makes it profitable to be in the business. These villains running the cartels are not only willing to kill their own men, but villages to increase their turf or to hide their farms. They kill civilians who stumble on their grow sites, some even in national forest stretching all the way into Canada. And they, of course, have no issue taking down law enforcement officers who get too close, even if they are just passing by. They use their money to fuel their wars for control and power, to run human trafficking rings, and to fulfill their endless desires. The Mexican cartels’ drugs fuel gangs that fight over turf world wide, and carry drugs that are far dirtier and dangerous than if they were legal and regulated. The blood is on the bricks and there is no way to wash it off, they are stained, which removes any bit of the sacredness that cannabis is intended to have.
