New Crime Task Force Helping OBN Tackle Oklahoma’s Black Market Marijuana Problem

Oklahoma’s new Crime Task Force through the Attorney General’s Office seized 72,000 pounds of illegal marijuana inside a Wagoner County barn last week. Authorities had to bring in heavy machinery to scoop it all up. The bust came from a tip about potential illegal activity, but so far -- no arrests have been made. 

The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics deals with black-market marijuana on a daily basis. OBN officials said state pressure helps weed out the people bringing illegal farms to Oklahoma. “It is a big problem,” said Mark Woodward, with OBN. “We’ve been focusing on these criminal organizations for the last three years.”  

Woodward said Oklahoma is a leader in black-market marijuana. “Probably have three thousand active farms right now that are under investigation,” Woodward said. “It just talks about the volume of black-market marijuana leaving our state."

One pound of marijuana can bring in at least $1,000. The recent bust of 72,000 pounds is a lot, but Woodward said they have seized as much as 130,000 pounds of marijuana in just one day. “We’re intercepting semi-trucks on a weekly basis that have as much as seven thousand pounds in it. that’s 28 million dollars,” Woodward said. 

Cleaning up a farm requires intense labor – they even bring in the National Guard to help. “They’ve provided manpower and heavy equipment for us,” Woodward said. 

Teams monitor this problem around the clock, but Woodward said it has to be sustained. “We’ve gotta maintain that and our legislature’s made commitments to provide the funding so that we can continue to maintain this pressure,” Woodward said. 

Woodward said they can’t stop at the farm itself. “If you don’t shut down the people who are operating that farm, who oftentimes are not even in Oklahoma, then they’ll simply replace those workers and plants within a matter of hours,” Woodward said. 

OBN’s investigators have shut down more than 1,000 operations in three years. “Made close to three hundred arrests; seized over seven hundred thousand pounds of marijuana,” Woodward said. 

They’re learning how to catch people before the problem starts. “We’re catching them on the front end as a new fraudulent opportunity tied back to these same groups we’re already investigating,” Woodward said. 

A method Woodward hopes produces fewer headlines about problems and more interviews about solutions as the state continues to eliminate illegal grow operations.