Jason Hopkins, DCNF

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is hoping to pull National Guard troops away from the U.S.-Mexico border to help protect his state’s struggling marijuana industry.

Faced with competition from a robust black market, the legal cannabis industry in California has not experienced the growth that supporters had expected. Newsom — who enjoyed hundreds of thousands in campaign donations from the marijuana lobby — wants to aid the industry by redeploying at least 150 California National Guard troops from the U.S.-Mexico border and instead use them to combat illegal grows in Northern California.

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

“There are legitimate concerns in Northern California, particularly as it relates to illegal cannabis grows. They are getting worse, not better,” Newsom stated last week, according to the Los Angeles Times. “I want to see more enforcement.”

California citizens voted to legalize recreational marijuana in November 2016, and the law officially changed in January 2018. Proponents initially anticipated a thriving cannabis industry within the country’s most populous state. California officials, for example, estimated there would be up to 6,000 licensed cannabis shops within the first few years and that the industry would bring up to $1 billion a year in revenue.

Instead, the state only issued 547 temporary and annual licenses by December 2018, and California is only expected to rake in $471 million in revenue this fiscal year. New Frontier Data, a firm that analyzes marijuana sales, estimated the black market accounts for as much as 80 percent of the marijuana sold in the state. California’s illegal pot market is estimated to be four times that of the legal market.

Beyond a thriving black market, experts blame California’s lackluster marijuana sales on complex and burdensome regulations by the state government.

Newsom’s plan to target drug cartels and illegal grows comes after he blasted the Trump administration’s security prioritization at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Democratic governor announced on Feb. 11 that he would be pulling most of the state’s 400 National Guard troops from the southern border, rebuking an agreement his predecessor made with President Donald Trump in 2018 to beef up border security.

“We are not interested in participating in this political theatre. I think it is political theatre,” Newsom said in Sacramento, California, as he announced his decision. He went on to claim border crossings are at record lows and argued that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens. “The whole thing is ludicrous,” he said of Trump’s border security efforts.

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

The Democratic governor — who is serving his first year in office — offered further criticism of the president’s border agenda in his State of the State address.

Follow Jason on Twitter. 

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].

Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BizPac Review.

• Author
• Recent Posts

BPR Wire

Latest posts by BPR Wire (see all)

• The Florida candidate laser-focused on eradicating horrific animal crimes - March 22, 2024
• Sabo: ‘Rush was our GOAT, there was no equal and he made it look easy’ - February 18, 2024
• Dana Bash appears to want to crawl out of her own skin when Ramaswamy ‘goes there’ on J6 - December 7, 2023

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.