AG Drummond on marijuana: will we let this state be invaded by Mexican cartels, Chinese operatives?

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond had some sharp words to say about the crime invasion Oklahoma has been experiencing with the marijuana industry, which is sure to increase if State Question 820 passes today and brings full-on recreational marijuana to our state:

Oklahoma’s new chief law enforcement officer says the state’s inundation with illegal marijuana production and distribution has unleashed significant new challenges to public safety and general law and order.

Voters will decide Tuesday whether it should be legal to possess and grow marijuana for personal, recreational use in the state.

In his first appearance at the Tulsa Press Club since being sworn into office, Attorney General Gentner Drummond said that for him, “The question is not shall we smoke or not smoke marijuana. The question is: Will we let this state be invaded by Mexican cartels, Central American cartels and Chinese operatives that are absolutely destroying our state?”

While Drummond said he does not personally support the idea of legalizing recreational marijuana, he also said he isn’t out “campaigning actively against it.”

But regardless of what the voters decide, it is his duty to uphold the law — and he has made it his mission to fight the new wave of organized crime he says has accompanied thousands of illegal marijuana grow operations across all 77 counties.

“I want to give my children … a good reason to stay in Oklahoma,” Drummond said. “And to do that we have to have safe communities. We have to be able to go to bed at night in rural Oklahoma and not fear being murdered in our sleep. We have to be able to walk the streets of downtown Tulsa without the fear of having the criminal element continue to magnify and the magnitude increase in our state.”

Medical marijuana brought the state $59 million in tax revenue last year, but Drummond said only $1 million was left to increase funding to public education, as designed by the previous state question that legalized medical marijuana.

“That’s not a fair trade. It costs so much to administer and oversee the illegality of those that have invaded our state,” he said.

He shared that the latest Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control intelligence suggests that as many as 3,000 of the current 6,299 marijuana grow operations are illegal.

“To put that in perspective, the three largest legal grows in Oklahoma (could) supply every adult Oklahoman enough marijuana to smoke 10 joints a day,” Drummond said.

Read the rest of this article at the Tulsa World.

Vote NO on State Question 820 - today from 7am to 7pm at your polling place.