Marijuana smuggling is still a big thing along US borders - just not as big as it once was. Last year, US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) Officers seized 175,000 pounds of pot, way down from the nearly 3,000,000 pounds seized at the Southern Border at its peak in 2013.
The following year, recreational marijuana use became legal in Colorado and Washington. Since then, almost half of all US states have legalized weed in some form, which has significantly undercut demand for imported Mexican cannabis.
But Mexican cartels have adapted to continue smuggling marijuana to those states where it is still illegal. Most Mexican marijuana smuggling routes now run through Texas - the only state along the US-Mexico border where marijuana is not yet legalized, and where a large market for Mexican marijuana still exists.
Mexican Federal Highway 40 also runs from the "Golden Triangle" marijuana growing region directly to Texas (which has more International Bridges linking Mexico than any other US State), making the Lone Star State the prime route to smuggle Mexican marijuana into the country.
As a result, Federal, State, and Local law enforcement are reporting significant marijuana seizures in Texas.
On August 6, 2025, the Dallas Police Department’s Special Investigations Division (SID) Organized Crime & Racketeering Squad, acting on a tip that a large load of marijuana was being prepared for shipment out of the city, was able to identify the storage facility where it was hidden. Officers seized nearly 400 pounds of marijuana before it could be moved elsewhere in the US and made one arrest.
Three days earlier, in the Dallas suburb of Lewisville, a police officer making a routine traffic stop noticed the vehicle reeked of marijuana, which led to the discovery of 285 pounds of marijuana inside hidden compartments and the arrest of another smuggler.
And, on August 6, 2025, the Rio Grande Valley Sector of the US Border Patrol reported the seizure of almost $78,000 of marijuana bales that a smuggler was paddling across the Rio Grande in an inflatable boat into Texas.
And finally, not all of the weed busts in Texas involve raw Mexican marijuana. In May 2025, a US Border Patrol Agent assigned to the Sierra Blanca Checkpoint on Interstate 10 in West Texas discovered 2,300 pounds of THC products (illegal federally and in Texas unless from hemp) in a truck that attempted to roll past him. The illegal load was worth $1.8 million.
Do these large marijuana busts in Texas surprise you?
Share your thoughts in the comments to this article.
Abrazos,
Jack Beavers
It doesn't surprise me at all that we're getting all the cartels rolling into Tx - if it weren't for stupid fucks like Dan Patrick (& all the rest of their dumbfuck friends), we cld have taken steps towards legalization. I keep saying that Repubs are missing out on A Lot of $$$ by trying to stomp out the use of marijuana rather than legalizing it to make $$. Greg Abbot, the whiny baby ass-kissing hot wheels, has a "rainy day" fund (which I started hearing abt 15+ yrs ago) of Billions that Shld Have Gone to fixing our poor education system & repair broken infrastructure (some of which have been compromised since Katrina [remember That one which tried to erase southern Louisiana?!]). Orrrr some of that pile of $ cld be used to help set up systems of production & sales of marijuana that wld make the state More income (& maybe we cld let our children eat at school without having to do all the paperwork). Duh.
So if Texas were to legalize, state regulate it and tax its sale they would take in about 99% of the money currently going to the cartels correct?
So to me it seems like the cartels would be vehemently opposed to legalization