🌊 The Cannabis Crooks?

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Are federal agents stealing cannabis by the pound?

On February 14, Nick Spoor was transporting 22 pounds of cannabis from his company’s farm in southern New Mexico. As he headed north from Las Cruces, near Mexico, toward Albuquerque, he stopped at a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) checkpoint.

These stops are routine: Within 100 miles of the border, CBP runs checkpoints where agents search for illegal immigrants, narcotics, and other contraband. While cannabis is federally illegal, it’s legal in New Mexico. Businesses told Roca CBP had never interfered with them.

So Spoor thought little of his getting pulled over, even when a sniffer dog singled out his car. He explained that he was carrying 22 pounds of legal, documented cannabis.

But then the agents asked him to come inside, where they processed and detained him for three hours. When they did let him go, they notified him they would be seizing the cannabis. The agents told Spoor he would receive documentation confirming the seizure of his product, but he never did. 

Instead, $139,000 worth of weed disappeared into the agents’ hands.

Matt Chadwick, Nick Spoor’s supervisor at cannabis company Top Crop, told Roca that he has become aware of at least 12 other companies who have experienced something similar since the Valentine’s Day seizure. The total amount lost exceeds $300,000 in market value. Some seizures have been large enough to potentially “cripple an entire company.” 

Chadwick says that in each case, the agents “claim they’re going to destroy the product, but they don’t give any documentation.” In the more-than-dozen cases he has identified, only one affected person was given documentation concerning the seizure. 

Roca reviewed that document, which identifies the date, time, and subject of seizure. Under remarks it says, “Vehicle transporting THC products for a dispensary,” but it does not specify an amount seized.

Matt Kennicott – who runs a group that represents New Mexico cannabis businesses with under 50 employees – told Roca that the situation is unique: Businesses in Arizona and California have not reported similar seizures. 

“It’s just happening in [our CBP] sector,” he said. The impact is forcing businesses in southern New Mexico to stop shipping their products to the north, making it impossible for many businesses to operate. All cannabis has to be tested at labs, however those labs are in northern New Mexico, thereby preventing any southern companies from accessing them.

Ari Greenwald is among those affected. 

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