OK…so recreational marijuana is now legal in 10 states (plus D.C.) and medical marijuana is legal in even more – 34 to be exact. But that doesn’t mean that cartels from south of the border aren’t continuing their trade here in the US since they often offer less expensive marijuana to customers across the US.

And as the Trump administration’s increased enforcement at the border continues, we are seeing more frequent drug busts like this one at ports of entry from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas.

Nearly four tons of marijuana were packed alongside red hot jalapeños.

Border patrol officers at a port of entry in San Diego discovered nearly four tons of marijuana hidden beneath a shipment of jalapeños, officials said.

Officers assigned to the Otay Mesa cargo facility in California discovered the large amount of weed, worth about $2.3 million, wrapped in green packaging and stashed under a mountain of red jalapeño peppers, according to US Customs and Border Protection.

A CBP officer referred the truck to secondary check when a canine team alerted to them to the shipment of peppers. 

The officer then discovered and extracted 314 large wrapped packages of marijuana, weighing 7,560 pounds, within the shipment of jalapeño peppers.

But as more states legalize marijuana, we are seeing fewer and fewer drug busts like this one.

The decline in marijuana seizures at the US-Mexico border started in 2014, the year that Colorado and Washington became the first states in the US to legalize the sale of recreational weed to adults. Nine other states, including California, the country’s most populous and wealthiest state, as well as DC, have since legalized recreational use, further eating away at cartels’ market share.

CBP congratulated the officers on the bust.

“I am proud of the officers for seizing this significant marijuana load,” Otay Mesa Port Director, Rosa Hernandez, said in a statement.

“Not only did they prevent the drugs from reaching our community, they also prevented millions of dollars of potential profit from making it into the hands of a transnational criminal organization.”

Of course, upon news of the major pot bust, Twitter erupted with plenty of reactions.

Many were excited to for a possible new strain of spicy pot…or hot pot. Some were taking ideas from this seizure and hoping growers would take advantage and maybe soon offer up a jalapeño flavored marijuana strand at dispensaries in states with legal weed.

While others were just in awe of the amount of weed found.

I mean 4 tons of weed…that’s more than 125,000 ounces of bud. Do the math and figure out how many joints that is…it’s a lot that’s for sure.

While some speculated that maybe the smugglers were hoping to create an entirely new market.

I mean it would definitely be a new product on the market and one that could do really well, especially in Southern California – where weed and jalapeños are as American as baseball and apple pie.

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