Jogro
Well-Known Member
First of all, its a mistake right off the bat to accuse any government agency of efficiency, especially when it comes to money! In practice, cops, customs, and DEA destroy drugs all the time.
Which isn't to say that SOME drugs don't get diverted for personal use or resale along the way. . .of course that happens, especially at the individual officer level, but once the stuff gets logged in as evidence, the vast majority of it does get incinerated. What's the "profit"? There is plenty. First of all, the more drugs they confiscate and destroy, the more attention and funding the depts in question get, so there is direct professional and financial incentive to do their jobs here. Forfeiture laws also ensure that law enforcement can keep the proceeds of NON-drug related property they confiscate including CASH. . .meaning there is PLENTY of direct financial incentive these agencies have to make busts and seize drugs. Again, at the level of individual corrupt officers, sure. . .but why should any agency take a chance redistributing drugs, when they can LEGALLY and OPENLY make millions grabbing stuff from dealers?
On ceeds, put it this way.
If you're not a grower, drug cannabis ceeds are no different than any other hemp ceeds. . .they're just birdceed and effectively worthless. Probably a grand total of NONE of these customs agents are themselves cultivating. Most of them are pretty "straight" and don't smoke. They're all probably subject to random drug tests too. Even if they were using, why would they need to grow when they effectively have access to unlimited amounts of actual drugs? Why steal beans if you can just as easily steal weed or hash?
As matter of practice, beans are only worth the big bucks (eg $30-150/pack) when they're being sold though a recognized bank at retail. Even the breeders typically only get half the retail price, so now you're down to $15-60/pack, and that is the absolutely MAXIMUM any bank is going to pay for these.
In practice, there is probably no good way to re-introduce confiscated beans back into the grey market sales chain where they achieve max value, but even if you could do that, no bank is going to be willing to pay as much for these as they would legitimate beans from actual breeders they're doing business with. So now potential value of confiscated beans is even less. Unless the customs agent in question were directly reselling them himself (which is highly implausible) they're going to have to deal with some middleman reseller, again taking their own cut (which is probably at least another 50%).
Beans that come without breeders packs (which is probably most of the ones confiscated) outside the usual grey-market sales chain? Those are going to be worth even less to anybody because in many cases the type of bean and breeder can't be identified, and even if they could, nobody would be able to trust that they beans actually were what was claimed.
The point is, most of the value of these sorts of beans comes from their provenance. Outside the regular retail sales chain (IE breeder > reputable bank > customer) packs of confiscated ceeds just aren't going to be worth much. Although obviously there are plenty of growers who would be happy to have these, unlike with actual drugs, there isn't some established domestic black market that these types of confiscated beans are easily diverted to. If labelled confiscated commercial beans started showing up for domestic sales in any kind of quantity, the growing community would find out about it, and it would raise a gigantic red flag. So far as I know, this simply hasn't happened.
Also, as a matter of practice, I don't think there are many customs agents willing to risk their jobs or jail time over $10-100 worth of beans. Again, with so many other things that are worth more worth stealing (eg actual drugs), if a customs agent were crooked, I think they'd be more interested in that sort of stuff. I also STRONGLY doubt that customs is like some office facility where the agents all have their own private cubicles where they can just stuff things into their pockets. Its almost certainly a number of big open areas where not only is everyone being watched, but there is also probably video surveillance to help keep everyone honest.
Bottom line is, I'm not saying that NO beans ever walk out of customs, but the number is probably minimal. 99%+ of confiscated beans probably go right from the package to the "burn" bin, without much or any thought on the part of the customs officer in question.