That analysis sounds compelling, but doesn't really match up with the experience of state-level cannabis legalization in the US. For two years, Colorado was the

That analysis sounds compelling, but doesn't really match up with the experience of state-level cannabis legalization in the US. For two years, Colorado was the only state in the US with legal cannabis, let alone the world. Did cannabis get exported from Colorado? Absolutely. Did it corrupt the legal industry or the Colorado state government? Not to any extent, I'm aware. Like you said, the margin on inter-state smuggling are so large, that there's no reason for exporters to even bother with grey market wholesale sourcing to save a few pennies. Just source retail, then ship overseas. Back of the envelope math. Let's say cocaine is recreationally legal in Colombia and retailed at $5/gram. (Black market prices inside Colombia are already cheaper than this.) Let's say wholesale production costs $1000/kilo. Current wholesale smuggling prices in the US are $25,000/kilo in the US, and double that in Europe. The simplest option for any would-be is just to have smurfs continuously accumulate recreational product from Colombian legal retailers. Then package small-scale retail buys into wholesale international shipment. Trying to buy wholesale from produces only increases profit margins by ~20%, and makes your operation a lot more visible and attackable. Pablo Escobar was a different beast because he had to run an enormous and visible illegal operation inside Colombia. He needed farms, processing facilities and all the logistics that come with that. That required bribing a lot of politicians to protect those operations. A post-legalization Escobar doesn't need anything more than a warehouse, a small payroll of shoppers, a Silk Road account, and some international postage. This isn't speculation, it's pretty much how the large-scale MDMA traffickers (who are so lightly prosecuted that it might as well be legal) operate in Holland.