OKLAHOMA CITY — One evening in mid-July, state drug enforcement agents intercepted a semi-truck leaving an Oklahoma City warehouse bound for New York.
The truck was hauling 7,000 pounds of Oklahoma-grown marijuana, concealed in produce boxes, that would have been worth about $28 million on the East Coast. The same amount of marijuana would only go for $6 million in Oklahoma’s legal market, according to law enforcement estimates.
Before it was shut down, investigators said multiple truckloads would depart the warehouse every week, headed for other states, according to Mark Woodward, spokesman for Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
The bureau is actively investigating several similar operations, he said.
Oklahoma’s loose oversight of its medical marijuana program, coupled with cheap land and licensing fees, has sparked an influx of illicit grow operations that has overwhelmed law enforcement.
“We’ve been told we are now the number-one supplier of black market marijuana in the country,” Woodward said, citing information from agencies around the U.S.
Over the past two years, the Bureau of Narcotics has shut down nearly 1,000 illicit marijuana grow operations across Oklahoma, but as many as 5,000 more may remain, according to Woodward and other officials.
Last year, state lawmakers attempted to contain the problem by enacting a moratorium on new grower licenses and raising fees, but officials say Oklahoma still is catching up on enforcement after a successful citizen-led effort to legalize medical use in 2018 led to a massive marijuana boom.
Even though the number of growers peaked in 2021, Oklahoma still is producing 64 times more cannabis than is needed to meet demand for legal marijuana within the state, according to research published in June by Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority. Some of this oversupply may be frozen to be sold legally at a later date, but much of it is fueling black market sales out of state, according to the report.
The Bureau of Narcotics has traced Oklahoma-grown marijuana to almost every state and is currently investigating more than 3,000 farms. Law enforcement officials said most of these grows are operated by foreign criminal organizations — many of which make use of indentured labor, spray their plants with dangerous pesticides, and illegally move marijuana across state lines.
A thriving U.S. black market
“No trespassing” and “beware of dogs” signs line the fence at one large marijuana grow situated on the Canadian River near the town of Wayne. Tightly-packed rows of marijuana seedlings could be seen in one greenhouse on the day Frontier reporters visited.
The out-of-state operators came to Oklahoma for one reason: “Money,” said one farm worker, chuckling.
The man, who didn’t give his name and spoke limited English, said he had moved from China to Oakland, Calif., and then to Oklahoma to work in the marijuana industry.
He said many operations have more than doubled their returns by moving to Oklahoma from other states, as he wrote down figures on a napkin to illustrate his point.
Attempts to contact the owner of the grow operation near Wayne were unsuccessful.
Even though recreational marijuana has been legalized in 23 states, growers still can make more money shipping their product out of Oklahoma because higher prices and stringent regulations in other states have allowed the black market to continue to prosper.
With some of the cheapest agricultural land in the country, comparatively low licensing fees and a lack of pandemic restrictions on travel, Oklahoma was one of the most inexpensive places to grow marijuana in the U.S. when growers began coming in droves in late 2020.
Before the state enacted a moratorium on grow licenses in 2022, growers only needed to pay $3,000 in licensing fees.
Many states, including Arkansas and Missouri, allow only a handful of licensed growers and have much higher fees. Arkansas law allows only eight companies to grow statewide and each of them must pay the state $100,000 annually.
Oklahoma law also requires that at least 75% ownership of a medical marijuana operation be held by an Oklahoma resident who has lived in the state for over two years. But out-of-state and foreign groups were able to hire law firms or pay individual…
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