Feds Seize Legal Weed at NM Checkpoints

Published April 3rd, 2024 at 12:00 am, Last Updated April 4th, 2024 at 12:01 pm

New Mexico’s cannabis businesses are already facing plenty of challenges as they navigate through a market fraught with oversaturation, overtaxation and growing pains in general. Now they have to deal with the federal government stealing their inventory.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents over the past two months, have confiscated legal cannabis transported by state-licensed cannabis companies as they pass through interior border checkpoints located inside the borders of the state of New Mexico. The cannabis companies involved estimate that the seized products were worth nearly $100,000 altogether.

On March 14, two Head Space Alchemy employees were stopped at the interior border checkpoint going north on Interstate 25, north of Radium Springs, between Las Cruces and Albuquerque.

“It’s typically a routine process,” says Kai Kirk, Head Space Alchemy partner. “They just stop cars every now and then—whoever they want—and ask if you’re a legal resident. Check that you’re not trafficking people—which is their job—and then they let us go on our way.”

But a recent stop was different. Kirk says the officers began asking atypical questions like where the workers were going and why they were going there. The employees told Border Patrol agents that they were transporting legal cannabis as part of their jobs and offered up their manifest.

“They threw our employees in a holding cell,” says Kirk. “They had their pictures taken. They were fingerprinted. They were made to feel like criminals.”

Kirk says the workers were held for over an hour. Although Border Patrol agents ultimately allowed the Head Space Alchemy employees to leave, the emplyees say the officers told them that their names would be entered into a database of drug traffickers.

Notably, they kept the cannabis that the workers were transporting. Kirk estimates that the value of the seized products was around $7,500. He points out that no insurance will cover this sort of loss.

A month before the incident, on Feb. 14, Top Crop Cannabis operations manager Nick Spoor was stopped at the same checkpoint after a Border Patrol K9 unit presumably tagged the vehicle. He says he wasn’t concerned at first. 

“I thought it was just an immigration checkpoint,” Spoor says. “There was nobody else in the car. It was just me.”

Spoor said he showed them his manifest and allowed them to inspect his cargo—around 35 pounds of flower. He was immediately put in a holding cell where he says he stayed for nearly two hours. 

“They were just talking to each other—like bragging,” he says. “I heard one guy say it was the bust of the century.”

As with the Head Space employees, Spoor was ultimately allowed to leave, but the products he was carrying—which he estimates to be worth around $85,000—were seized by the CBP. He says he was informed that they would be destroying the products and that he would receive a letter in the mail with instructions on how to receive compensation.

“That letter never came,” says Spoor.

James Murch, President of Animas Cannabis was stopped after a K9 unit dinged his car while passing through the same checkpoint on March 11, three days before the Head Space employees were stopped. Murch says he’s been stopped before, but that agents inspected his paperwork and allowed him to go on his way. This time, they held him for a few hours before taking $6,300 worth of products and letting him loose.

As this story was being written, your humble reporter received word that CBP had hit at least one other company (and possibly another), bringing the grand total to at least four.

A representative for Moth Transportation Services, a licensed cannabis courier service, confirmed that an employee was stopped and relieved of their courier package containing cannabis products, while traveling through the same Border Patrol checkpoint the night before this story went to print. In this instance, Border Patrol agents chose to allow the courier to continue on without being detained.

This particular occurrence highlights an aspect of this story that many of the marijuana workers found especially disconcerting: There hasn’t been much consistency on the part of Border Patrol agents when it comes to seizing weed products.

The CBP confirmed, in an email to The Paper., that its policy is to enforce federal controlled substance laws at checkpoints.

“Although legal for medical and/or recreational use in many states, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law,” wrote a CBP representative. “Therefore, U.S. Border Patrol agents will continue to take appropriate enforcement action against those who are encountered in possession of marijuana anywhere in the United States.”

The CBP policy isn’t new. The agency reminded New Mexicans not to bring weed through the checkpoints back in 2022, when the state legalization law kicked in.

However, there seems to be confusion among agents as to how to act on that policy. Over and over, cannabis workers told The Paper. that agents seemed confused about how to approach the situation. Some workers reported having been stopped in the past and allowed to leave with products and cash once CBP agents compared the manifest to the load, while others had their products seized. Some were detained, while others were allowed to leave.

No cannabis workers so far have been arrested during these incidents, and CBP agents have taken only products, leaving any cash that they’ve found.

But losing those products can be a serious problem in an already aggressive industry. These stops also represent a significant loss in potential tax revenue for the state. Altogether, nearly $99,000 worth of products were taken, according to the cannabis companies. Those products would have potentially produced more than $11,800 in excise taxes.

In a written statement to The Paper., Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said, “This is a problem, and my administration is working through a solution. We’re likely to use the same strategy that we did in 2022 to protect licensed businesses in good standing in the cannabis industry.”