Mann is massively arrested for smuggling illegal cannabis pesticides from Mexico into the United States

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On Friday, a 40-year-old man was sentenced to 90 days in prison by a federal court for smuggling illegal pesticides from Mexico into the United States. Authorities suggested the substances were on the way to illegal cannabis cultivation – and that the stuff poses a serious risk to wildlife and marijuana users themselves.

“Not only did this person ignore the dangers of improperly handling these types of chemicals, he also tried to smuggle the chemicals into the US, which is a very serious crime,” said Cardell T. Morant, a San Diego ICE special agent in a press statement.

Felix Gutierrez was caught carrying 48 undeclared pesticides, including Furadan (the US trade name for carbofuran), Monitor, Bayfolan, Biomec, Ridomil Gold, Kanemite and Rodentox. Two of them contain substances that cannot be sold in the United States.

Furadan, for example, was dragged from US shelves in 2008 – unfortunately the super-lethal pesticide continues to be used and has alerted US Fish and Wildlife Service authorities to the high incidence of bird murders for which it is responsible.

And it’s not all bad for the birds. One study showed that the rate of pesticide transmission to cannabis users through a glass pipe could be as high as nearly 70 percent.

Gutierrez was also sentenced to 100 hours of community service, a $ 2,500 fine, and $ 8,807 for the cost of destroying the pesticides. He confessed to hiring someone else to smuggle pesticides for cultivation, even after Gutierrez was arrested for the crime in April.

He’s not the first to be caught at the border for pesticide or fertilizer sales. In March, a woman from Menifee, Calif., Was reportedly sentenced to 70 days in prison and fined $ 20,079 for pleading guilty to smuggling illegal crops.

Not only were the pesticide busts motivated by wildlife and human safety, but they came during an enthusiastic campaign to restrict unlicensed cannabis cultivation in California.

Five years after Proposition 64 legalized adult cannabis in the state, California officials say illegal sales are still hampering legal businesses looking for financial sustainability. Recently, the state government announced $ 100 million to help businesses transition from unlicensed to licensed (but critics have suggested that lowering sky-high tax rates and royalties would be a better solution.)

Cannabis from unlicensed California cultivation has recently been blamed for the struggles of the legal cannabis industry as distant as Illinois, Oklahoma, and Arizona.

US law enforcement agencies tried to underscore the gravity of the crime by comparing it to the smuggling of illegal drugs itself.

“The illegal pesticide trade is big business and we are aggressively pursuing many of these smuggling cases to protect the public,” said US Attorney Randy Grossman. “The toxic chemicals are extremely dangerous and can poison people, wildlife, water sources and soil. Smugglers like this defendant try to smuggle banned pesticides across the border as if they were illegal narcotics and they get caught and end up in jail. This is how serious these offenses are. “