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Officers seize $27 million of pot marked as papaya at the Mexico border

February 25, 2021

By JOSH FRIEDMAN

United States Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers seized $27 million worth of marijuana from a truck driver hauling papayas who tried entering California from Mexico on Monday.

Shortly before 6 p.m., a truck driven by a 50-year-old Mexican man arrived at the Otay Mesa port of entry between San Diego and Tijuana. The truck was hauling a trailer with a shipment labeled as fresh papayas, CBP stated in a news release.

The CBP officer who encountered the truck instructed the driver to pass through the border facility’s X-ray imaging system. During the X-ray inspection, a CBP officer identified anomalies within the shipment and called for a more intensive examination of the truck and trailer.

Officers used a narcotic detector dog to screen the shipment, which prompted a search of the trailer. CBP personnel searched the load and found 873 wrapped packages of marijuana, totaling more than 12,000 pounds, mixed with the shipment of papayas.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents took custody of the suspect and later booked him in the Metropolitan Correction Center in San Diego. CBP officers seized the truck, trailer and marijuana.


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Would anyone have cared if it was $27 million in vodka? I mean, what’s the difference? I would suggest that vodka has far more of a negative impact on our society than pot does.


-6

Distraction while they rolled the heroin through in a different truck. They’re all celebrating their catch of Mexican brick weed, while the cartel is having a good chuckle. Go super troopers!


-2

Love the cop math. According to a quick google search, Mexican brick weed sells for $30/kilo. 12000lbs = 5454kg x $30 = $163,620. Quite a big difference between $27,000,000.


1

Maybe they calculated the value including the additional taxes California adds to the “legal” pot places in the state. Hence the reason the black market is still around and likely increasing despite what officials told us and that the black market would go away once we voted to legalize pot. We know it was just an attempt to pour more money into government coffers to spend on salaries, benefits and pensions.


8

Great Job


8

Wait, weren’t we told legalization was going to stop the flow from south of the border? How’s that working for us?


12

Still too many places where it is not legal. When everyone can grow it in their back yard, there will be no illegal market for it. Until then , well, opportunists…….


6

Correct if I’m wrong on this ( pot has never interested me) but doesn’t the current law in California allow for a certain amount to be grown in a back yard, for personal use, not resale?


Anyone?


2