Steve Robinson

It's a very low risk way to generate huge amounts of cash.

At the congressional hearing on the September 18th, I guess there was an individual from Oklahoma who estimated that the illicit business in Oklahoma, which is dominated by Chinese players,

was worth $150 billion.

150 billion.

And it's a cash business.

It's a cash business everywhere you go, whether it's legal operators or illegal operators, because the federal prohibition prevents you from accessing traditional payment rails.

So you can't swipe a Visa credit card

and buy marijuana at a dispensary.

You have to use the ATM that they have at the dispensary.

So you're dealing with, just in Oklahoma, $150 billion a year in illicit sales, all cash.

In Maine, they've estimated that it's somewhere between $4 and $5 billion.

Personally, I think that law enforcement has a little strain of the reefer madness overestimating the value.

I don't think they fairly take into the equation the costs of doing business, reinvesting in new real estate, buying chemicals, buying spools of copper wire to put together a marijuana grow.

So I think that that might be a little bit on the high end, but we're talking about massive, massive amounts of cash that are then reinvested into new real estate and

other malign activities of the CCP.

Some of this stuff goes far beyond the remit of a journalist from Maine.

Yes.

And yes.

What am I missing?

So the the cannabis that they're producing more often than not has pesticides on it, banned substances.