California Is High on Illegal Marijuana

Gov. Gavin Newsom touts a seizure, as the black market in pot flourishes.

By The Editorial Board,   WSJ OPINION

Updated July 10, 2026

More than 63,000 pounds. That’s how much illegal marijuana California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Wednesday that law enforcement officials have seized over the past three months, carrying a market value of $104 million. Wait, didn’t Mr. Newsom say legalizing pot would eliminate the black market?

Yes, he did. It was one of many doubtful promises Mr. Newsom and other progressives made to convince voters to legalize the drug. In 2016 Californians approved a ballot initiative to permit the recreational use and sale of weed. The state was then supposed to set up a comprehensive scheme to license, regulate and tax the drug.

“We moved towards legalization to get people into the daylight and into the sunshine of a regulated environment,” Mr. Newsom said in 2017. “There is no more black market.” He needs to get out more. The black market continues to thrive, especially in the state’s rural areas where transnational gangs have used the cover of legalization to grow weed.

Some of California’s illicit harvest is sold on the street in the state at lower prices than in legal dispensaries. (Marijuana remains illegal under federal law.) Much is also exported to places with less permissive laws.California marijuana is known worldwide for its high potency, and the United Kingdom has been seizing suitcases full of the stuff smuggled in on planes by gangs.

Licensed pot businesses also continue to complain that they are being undercut by illegal operators. This prompted Democrats in Sacramento last year to cut taxes on the industry. Mr. Newsom said the tax cut would promote “the long-term success of the legal industry.” Lo, progressives turnout to be supply-siders when the supply they want is reefer.

The tax cut also hasn’t snuffed out the black market, as evidenced by the Governor’s press release this week. It notes that state and local law enforcement have in the last three months eradicated nearly 90,000 cannabis plants, confiscated 17 firearms and made 24 arrests at illegal cannabis sites.

Since 2022, “the state has seized and destroyed more than 841,000 pounds of illicit cannabis valued at more than $1.3 billion,” Mr. Newsom’s office said. Some has been grown using toxic chemicals that “are harmful to fish and wildlife and the habitats they depend on to survive, and they’re a threat to consumers,” explained the state fish and wildlife director.

Where are the Sierra Club protesters when you need them?

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A jar of Marijuana at a California store. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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Appeared in the July 11, 2026, print edition as 'California Is High on Illegal Pot'.

The Editorial Board speaks for free markets and free people ,the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith's “Wealth of Nations.”

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