(NewsNation) — Foreign superpowers are getting in on the marijuana business in Oklahoma, from the Chinese Communist Party to Mexican cartels and the Italian mafia.
New numbers from the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics estimate more than 70% of illegal growing operations in the state have international ties.
The market is over-saturated with crime, cutting the legs out from under legitimate licensed growers. And those illegal operators are, in turn, feeding a black market the state can’t seem to control.
W.B. Johnson set down his family’s roots on the frontier 131 years ago, before Oklahoma was a state. Five generations later, his great-great-grandson Joey Meibergen is still running Johnston Seed Company — which some regard as a giant in the farming industry.
“He’d be amazed,” said Meibergen, the CEO and president of Johnston Seed Company. “The technology has just been exponential, even in the last 20 years when we started plant breeding.”
The family business thrived for more than a century selling seeds, grain, cattle and Bermuda grass. But like other successful operations, Johnson Seed Company reached a point where it needed to pivot and take on a new risk. For Meibergen, that means entering the marijuana industry.
“To me, it was a form of agriculture,” he said. “You grow it like you grow tomatoes.”
Primal Cannabis grows hundreds of thousands of marijuana plants on its 160 acres of Oklahoma farmland. Partially funded by the historic Johnston Seed Company, the business sells joints, extracts, flowers and vapes.
Despite an impressive rollout, business isn’t booming. Primal Cannabis’ leadership says it’s a statewide problem: Cheap licenses for cheaper land. What they consider a lack of guidelines and loose restrictions have opened the floodgates to organized criminal networks, they said.
Anyone with a little money could settle down in the Sooner State and they did.
“In year one, as soon as it opened, it was like ‘we’re off to the races,’” Meibergen said. “They weren’t regulating anyone bringing in anything from out-of-state.”
Now, he feels Oklahoma’s government let him down.
“This could have all been handled a lot differently,” Meibergen said.
Authorities say international syndicates use slave labor in inhumane working conditions to grow their pot and sell it on the black market.
And it’s not just the Chinese Communist Party. The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics has discovered ties to Mexico, Armenia, Bulgaria, Russia and the Italian mob.
Authorities may sling-load illegal marijuana for destruction, but the fight can feel never-ending. Meanwhile, licensed holders are seeing their profits slashed from under them.
The competition from cartels in Oklahoma has drastically impacted the price on the shelves, Meibergen said. Five years ago, a quarter pound of medicinal marijuana might sell for more than $800. Now Primal Cannabis says they’re lucky to get $200 for it.
“We’ve lost millions,” Meibergen said.
Primal Cannabis said it let go about 80% of its workforce to adapt and drastically scaled back the amount of planting done outdoors.
“Hindsight is 20/20,” Primal Cannabis General Manager Joanna Hamrick said. “And I think if we could go back to 2018, I seriously doubt we would jump into this venture.”
The operation adds up. Electricity costs $9,000 per month and labor is $35,000 per month. The fencing perimeter of the farm alone costs $250,000.
Those are expenses illegal operators might forego.
“They probably are still paying for electricity, but I know they didn’t spend half a million dollars on a fence and I know they didn’t spend $20,000 on a security system,” Hamrick said.
The governor, state regulators and law enforcement say they’re cracking down on illegal operations.
Commercial grow licenses are harder to come by and the attorney general says a first-of-its-kind task force has run out thousands of illegal cannabis farms in the state.
But licensed Oklahoma farmers say it’s too little, too late.
“We had such high hopes for what medical cannabis could bring to the state, and so it’s kind of a shame what’s happened to it,” Meibergen said.
Since 2021, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics says the number of registrants to grow dropped from 10,000 to 3,000.
They say that’s tangible proof their efforts to weed out bad actors are working.
The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority has also implemented seed-to-sale tracking – helping officials identify who’s operating legally and who’s not.