The stress, paranoia, and legal risks associated with illicit drug trafficking outweigh any potential financial gain.

“there's no amount of money that you can make that can you know that that can uh get you that can justify the mental damage you do to yourself and the emotional damage you do to yourself”

The current approach of raiding illegal marijuana sites and punishing individual workers is ineffective because it fails to target the criminal masterminds or the financial networks behind them.

“our approach so far has been to, uh, you know, kick the door in on a marijuana grow and arrest whoever's there and destroy their plants. Mhm. >> And a couple things happened after that. Uh so you you arrest the guy who's there. The guy who's there is probably a victim of human trafficking.”

Legalization would likely fail to eliminate the black market for drugs because it would be heavily taxed and less appealing than the established illicit supply chain.

“you still got a black market I mean you got legal dispensaries and at first people were like oh even myself are like man they're they're taxing like I don't want to go like tax I would just go to my dealer”

He earned millions in the marijuana business and views the trade as a lucrative enterprise he successfully controlled.

“it's not a it's not a crime when we do it organized crime does it and there's violence involved and they bring that reter in in yes it becomes bigger sentences but marijuana in itself it's legal today and it's I made millions of dollars that was my one that I made millions of dollars in the marijuan”

The drug trade cannot be stopped because people will continue to seek out substances regardless of prohibition efforts.

“They can't stop drugs from coming into our maximum security penitentiies. So if you can't stop it from coming into a maximum security penitentiies, you definitely can't stop it from coming into the country.”

The increase in cocaine demand in the US and the growth of the drug trade in Colombia present a very mixed and concerning picture.

“So I think it's a very very very mixed picture.”

Eradicating illegal drug cultivation in regions like Colombia is complex because farmers struggle to earn comparable incomes through legal crops.

“it is possible for farmers to make good legal incomes, but it's quite complicated.”

The illegal drug trade is inherently dangerous and unreliable because the people involved are prone to betrayal.

“somebody's always gonna tell that's one thing I learned about the feds man like look it's 90% yeah like you got all these guys in there with their chest poked out promote it so they're investigating us for that”