Chinese and Mexican drug cartels are trafficking illegal marijuana across America by exploiting the nation’s legal cannabis market.

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), international crime organizations have been managing a multibillion-dollar illegal cannabis trade in the United States for a minimum of ten years.

The DEA, in its 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment, revealed that drug traffickers are purchasing land in states with legal marijuana frameworks to operate illicit growing operations.

Those operations then serve as the ‘main suppliers’ of high-potency cannabis to states where the drug is not recreationally legal, as well as abroad, the report found.

DEA officials allege these Chinese-owned growing operations ‘do not follow the established licensure process’ and often ‘obtained licenses through falsified means’.

They use a labor force comprised of undocumented migrants at the grow sites and produce cannabis in ‘excess of quotas and legal market needs’. 

The cartels also launder their drug proceeds through licensed marijuana operations, straw ownership, casinos and mortgage fraud, the DEA report found.

Recreational marijuana is currently legal or decriminalized in 24 US states and the District of Columbia. It has been legalized for medical use in 39 states and DC. 

But the DEA warns that the ‘black market for marijuana has expanded significantly’ over the past 20 years as Chinese and other Asian criminal organizations have seized greater control over cannabis trade.

Mexican cartels have long dominated the market for illegal weed in the US, but Chinese-operated gangs are now vying to become America’s cannabis kingpins. 

Chinese gangs have set up thousands of illicit weed farms across America and are hiding in plain site, officials revealed.

The criminal enterprises are exploiting the legal market by operating their grows in states with weak marijuana regulatory structures, such as Oklahoma and California.

The DEA report highlighted Oklahoma as a hotspot for illicit cannabis operation, citing how 66 percent of seizures in 2024 occurred in the state.

Officials say Asian transnational criminal organizations are illegally cultivating marijuana with THC levels between 25 and 30 percent, making it among the most potent in drug-trafficking history.

Crime bosses have established ‘extensive illegal grow operations’ using falsified documentation and an undocumented labor force.

‘They are bringing in Mexican nationals, bringing in Chinese immigrants as well, and basically bringing them in as the labor force within these bureau sites, promising them payment,’ former California Wildlife Department Lt. John Nores told NewsNation.

‘Not paying these guys, kind of extorting and keeping them around, really not really against their will.’ 

Mexican cartels are also transporting marijuana into the US and partnering with domestic criminal groups to distribute it nationwide via the country’s highway network.

The DEA found that drug smugglers are transporting the products using the ‘shotgun approach’ in ‘personally owned’ vehicles, semi-trucks and tractor-trailers, the report states.

The shotgun approach, which aims to minimize risk, involves sending the drugs across multiple vehicles, each carrying no more than a couple hundreds pounds of cannabis.

Overseas shipments are sent via commercial flights from the US and Canada, as well as on shipping containers departing from American ports. 

Officials also found that cannabis produced in the US at grows operated by Chinese cartels is currently in high demand in the UK, France and Spain ‘due to its potency’.

Authorities in Oklahoma, Oregon, California, New Mexico and Maine have been battling a surge in Chinese weed farms – with some thought to be linked to criminal gangs known as ‘triads’, it emerged last year.

Officials warned that illicit marijuana operations were on the rise because Chinese funding for such operations was skyrocketing. 

It is unclear whether funding was coming from groups connected to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but experts have pointed out that triads are usually only allowed to operate if they agree to act as informal ‘enforcers’ for the government.

A Homeland Security memo, leaked to the Daily Caller in 2023, also raised the possibility that profits were being funneled back to Beijing. 

The surge in illicit cannabis operations comes as President Donald Trump has vowed to throw everything possible at Mexico’s cartels for flooding the US with deadly fentanyl.

Mexico’s new administration has shown a willingness to help, pursuing cartel operations and making arrests of gang leaders.

In February, Trump designated eight Latin American criminal groups as foreign terrorist organizations. He had called for the move in an executive order signed in January.

The ‘foreign terrorist organization’ label is unusual because it deploys a terrorist designation normally reserved for groups like al-Qaida or the Islamic State group that use violence for political ends – not for money-focused crime rings such as the Latin American cartels.

The Trump administration argues that the international connections and operations of the groups – including drug trafficking, migrant smuggling and violent pushes to extend their territory – warrant the designation.