Oklahoma law enforcement plans to tell Congress on Thursday that “foreign nationals,” most of them from China, have “infiltrated” the state’s once high-flying, now struggling legal medical marijuana industry.
That’s the testimony the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics (OBN) is preparing for a Homeland Security subcommittee, according to Tulsa-based ABC affiliate KTUL.
After an explosive start following MMJ legalization in 2019, Oklahoma’s cannabis industry has been in freefall.
After peaking at 14,000 licensed businesses in 2021, there are now about 5,000 MMJ operators in the state, Politico reported.
Of those, only about 2,000 are cultivators, OBN officials told KTUL.
Violent crimes and fraud connected to Oklahoma marijuana
Many “foreign nationals” have used “fraud and straw ownership” to dodge state law requiring licensed operators to be state residents, according to OBN.
Law enforcement as well as state and federal lawmakers have raised the issue of Chinese organized crime in state cannabis industries in Maine as well as Oklahoma.
Several high-profile crimes, including a 2022 quadruple murder at a cannabis cultivation operation, have fueled these fears.
But Oklahoma’s freewheeling approach to MMJ may have also contributed.
Oklahoma medical marijuana correction after explosive growth
With low fees, no statewide license cap and easy patient qualifications, the state became inundated with cannabis to an extent rarely seen.
The state produced as much as 64 times cannabis as it consumed, OBN Deputy Director Brian Surber told KTUL.
While law enforcement claimed credit for curtailing the state’s cannabis industry – and shuttering as many as 6,000 illegal farms – the market also appears to have played a role.
In an interview with Politico, former cultivator Josh Fischer said he lost $300,000 on an Oklahoma City-based cannabis business – partially because of losses suffered during a robbery, partially because of the market’s difficulties.
“I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to legally make it 100% by the book like I was doing,” he told Politico.
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