< http://www.msnbc.com/news/673623.asp?0na=x2112564-
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BIG BUSINESS OF MARIJUANA
The increasing industrialization of the drug trade has made marijuana a big business, with tanker trucks carrying multi-ton shipments north to the border.
And as profits soared, the marijuana trade became deadly. The biggest and bloodiest drug massacres in the past three years have involved marijuana, not harder drugs like cocaine or heroin.
Rather than killing a few rivals at a time, as the big cocaine cartels do, marijuana traffickers wipe out entire extended families.
Last February, a gang of gunmen stopped a truck carrying farmers to a town festival in Sinaloa, and methodically shot to death every passenger — 10 men and two teen-agers. The motive, according to police: One group of farmers allegedly had robbed marijuana from another.
A year earlier, in the western state of Michoacan, an entire family was gunned down in the rural home they used as a marijuana storehouse.
In September 1998, near Ensenada, gunmen rousted from bed an alleged marijuana trafficker and 18 members of his family, including eight children. They were lined up against a wall and shot with semiautomatic rifles. The motive: The trafficker had infringed on rivals’ business.
“Unlike the cocaine trade, where a few professionals pass imported drugs through Mexico, marijuana involves a lot of farmers, a lot of peasant growers,” said Chabat, the drug expert. “That means there is a lot more friction between the growers themselves, and the police.”
sKally