The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - I Spent A Week With The Sinaloa Cartel | Ep #12

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

Johnny spends a week in Culiacan, stronghold of the world famous Sinaloa Cartel, to view their new dispensary pot operations and interview bodyguards for El Mayo Zambada, the world's most wanted drug trafficker.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Sino-Loa drug cartel not only dominates the drug market, they invent the drug market. This is cartel-vap juice that I'm about to consume from the Sina-Loa cartel. Basically, Mexico has a new progressive government. They are just about to legalize recreational cannabis use in the country. And guess who's on the cutting edge of that market, the Sinaloa cartel? Just trust when I say that the cartel is the law down there. They have no problem in making people disappear and killing people. It makes me, I'm not going to lie, I haven't missed me in a drug dealer in a long time

until I got the Coaliercon, and it's giving me nostalgia. What's up, you guys? Welcome back to The Connect. My name is Johnny Mitchell, as usual, like, subscribe, turn on notifications, follow me on Instagram at Mr. Johnny Mitchell, and now support the Patreon, you guys, Patreon.com slash the Connect show. you get access to so much behind the scenes footage of us filming our episodes overseas. You get weekly bonus episodes.

Plus, you're going to get to participate in our YouTube live chats. It is the absolute best way to support us, especially now that we're doing gnarly episodes, you guys. YouTube is not giving us a lot of love, so we need your support to continue to fund these episodes. Become a producer in the show. Support the Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Connect show. All right, let's get into it.

All right, guys, we just got back from spending a week in Sinaloa, Mexico, in the city of Kulia Khan, which, if you know, is the headquarters of the world famous Sinaloa cartel. We wanted to investigate how marijuana legalization in the U.S. has forced this gigantic drug cartel to change its business bottle. And this is what we came up with. Hey, guys, let's take a minute to thank our amazing sponsor, Mood, an online dispensary that ships Delta 8 and Delta 9 products all over the. U.S. I love these guys because you know me. Nothing makes me happier than loopholes that fuck the federal government. They figured out a way to isolate the THC compounds known as Delta 8 and Delta 9 and therefore make them legal to ship and consume wherever you are. So look, they got Rice Krispy treats, they got gummies, they got pre-rolls, they got edibles, dude, they got

wax even and hash, Delta 8 hash. How about that? Delta 8's really nice. I like it because it's less intense than normal pot. Delta 9 will have you on the fucking moon on the other hand. So whatever kind of trip you want to take, mood has your back. Right now, head over to hello mood.co and use the promo code, connect free to get a free five pack of gummies. That's totally free. Or use the promo code, connect 20 to get 20% off your order. You can use those promo codes together if you want. These guys are an amazing sponsor. They're going to be a long time partner of the show, support them because they support us. Let's get back into it. All right. So if you're a fan of the show, you know that one of my main pot suppliers when I was a young man out there trafficking

weed all over the country was a group from Sinaloa, Mexico. This was in the heyday of the cartels doing that, migrating north, setting up grows, and starting to traffic American bud on American soil but grown with Sinole and hands all over the country. But then around like the late 2000, 2010, 2011, as more and more states began to legalize marijuana and the wholesale price of weed kept going down and down, it became not as profitable for Mexican cartels to come to America to do these grows. And remember also that Mexican bud exported to the U.S. accounted for 60% of the Sinaloa cartels revenue, 60%. So as the years went on and more and more pot became legal in the States, these guys will lose a lot of fucking money, like over half their business. And as

consequence, a lot of these smaller cartels completely went under because they just didn't have the financial resources to recoup the money they lost from the pot. That actually ironically helped Sinaloa get stronger because they ended up absorbing these smaller cartels on the border. But still, they lost almost 60% of their money just from weed becoming legal in the States. Now, they still exports some of it, but the revenues are razor thin, like I said. Kulia Khan is a city of about 800,000 people. So it's about the size of San Francisco. It's very small, but it is the stronghold of the Sinaloa cartel. It is the birthplace of El Chapo, and today it is still dominated by his heirs and by the gangs and the families left behind by Chappo. In fact, where we stayed,

the Hotel Lucerne is about a block away from where his son still operates the business. And it's in the same neighborhood where that famous shootout happened a couple of years ago, where the military went in there to try to arrest him, and all of the gangs and the families and the Sicario's from the surrounding area descended onto Kulia Khan and turned it into a war zone for an afternoon. And we're going to get into more detail in a later video, but just trust when I say that the cartel is the law down there.

And they made billions over the years smuggling pot to the U.S. That's the cornerstone of their business. It's how the cartel began. And if you watch Narcos, they give a pretty good history of the origins of the cartel. So it was the Sinaloa growers who picked up and moved to Guadalajara to begin what became the Guadalajara cartel, and that was Rafael Caro Quintero. It was Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and Ernesto Carrillo. And these were the godfathers of what would later become under El Chapo in the 1990s, the

Sina Loa Cartel. So pot growing and pot export is in their blood, and they made billions transporting it first through airplanes, next through giving it to drug mules, guys who had literally strap large backpacks filled with tons of weed and march it through the blazing desert across the border into the states. And then later, famously, El Chapo pioneered those drug tunnels where they could ship tons and tons at a time underneath the border and into the states. And it was with these profits that allowed them to be the pioneers in the cocaine trade. They were the first ones to go down and make the alliances with the Colombian cartels. And it just allowed them to completely buy all of the politicians and the police and the military in that region

and basically make them almost untouchable. So when Pot became basically fully legal in the United States, United States, more or less, and all of these other cartels in Mexico were going out of business, killing each other, scrambling, thought the world was ending. The Sinaloaans adapted. Basically, Mexico has a new progressive government, and they are on the precipice. They are just about to legalize recreational cannabis use in the country. And guess who's on the cutting edge of that market? The Sinaloa cartel. Essentially, what they're doing is just copying the U.S. business model, and they're using the city of Kulia Khan as a testing ground for this new retail distribution of cannabis.

Dispensaries, that's how they're moving their product. It looks like Los Angeles in Kulia Khan. And keep in mind, these are illegal. Weed is not legal down there yet, but they are totally unafraid of any law enforcement. This is their home. This is their stronghold. They are not worried about it. I mean, our driver was openly smoking weed as he was maneuvering us through the barrios of Kulia Khan. There's pot shops everywhere selling pipes, merchandise. You know, it's open. People are not in hiding about it. And it's created, I don't know, there's a sense of calm in the city now because everybody has an understanding.

The cops, the drug dealers, the cartels, the dispensaries, be discreet. Don't throw it in the cop's face and we're not going to fuck with you. We went to one of these dispensaries just to kind of see how it operated. And while we were in there filming, a police car actually pulls up right outside of the dispensary, and they're all showing us in the security cameras. And, I mean, it was like people could give a fuck less. Yeah. Haven't seen that all for the left corner?

Oh, yeah. So right now we have a police truck on the street outside of the dispensary. Speaking of the cops. And I think they're just probably there. They're probably just coming in to buy some weed, I thought. They're going to enter to buy a little of character. Yeah, their odds of this place getting raided is about the odds of it snowing. You know, here, it's not going to happen.

Exactly, yeah. So while we were there, we hooked up with our boy Luis Chaparro, and he is a narco journalist based out of El Paso. And he is like an encyclopedia of knowledge about the cartels. Yeah, dude, well, I've been in Mexico for a day. I've already paid off cops. I've already got diarrhea. You're getting that. Yeah, exactly. And it's just day one. Just let me get a girl pregnant and then we've completed

the transformation into Mexican men. Exactly. You need a belly outfit. Yeah, exactly. I really am too skinny. I really am too skinny for this country. I need to start drinking Coca-Cola at 9 a.m. And he kind of broke down how the cartels have set up this new dispensary retail distribution model for wheat. The majority of these dispensaries that have popped up around Kuliaana the last couple of years are controlled by the wing of the Sino-Loans called the Chapitos. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. So basically what happens here is that that faction of the organization is, let's call it investing in the wind industry,

in a different manner that they used to do, right? Like, what they used to do before was, like, they were planning, they all seemed to me a weed out in the mountains, and basically traveling out of that shit to the U.S. Right. But right now, the business model is changed. Now there are buying seeds from Canada, from Europe, from the U.S. Right.

And making their own strains, growing their own weed, which is actually really good quality. They hire people to, that they produce, local producers, that they know what they're doing. Right. That they know that they're actually passionate about weed. Right. So he was telling us that there's about 12 families or clans in the city of Kulia Khan who monopolize the drug activity. So is one of these operated independently? like the lady and the guy right here, do they own this dispensary?

I think it's owned by the organization both ends. Like the whole operation is like the organization is own both ends, right? And what they'll do is they'll hire a group of experienced growers, maybe guys who have been on the other side in America doing the outdoor grows, right? A lot of times guys who have been in the pot business or have family ties to the drug cartels, and they will sponsor them. So they will fund these grow operations. And they'll say, great, you grow for us now.

You have to sell us all of the pot. You cannot sell to anybody else. You have to sell us everything. Then we turn around and give it to the people that operate the dispensaries. And they can only buy from us. So it's this illusion of a free market, right? You've got different independent operators, the guys who grow it, the guys who work, the dispensary selling it.

But the cartels control them in a vertical way. So there is no other competition. And it's brilliant, too, because if a grow house or a dispensary gets raided, it's not the cartel guys who are getting taken out. It's these independent operators. So cartels remain untouchable. So it's these families who use the dispensaries and the growers to sell weed internally in the city of Kulia Khan, and they kick up a percentage of their profits to the cartel, Los Chapitos, who are controlled by El Chapo's son. And what they're doing is they're paying for the protection that the cartel offers.

meaning the cops, the military, the federales are all paid off, any danger from other cartels. They've got Sicario's waiting to fight them off. That's the way it essentially works. And we're going to go into that more in a later video. So we spent the afternoon at one of these dispensaries, and it looked identical to something you would see on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. It's very retail friendly. You know, you have all different kinds of strains.

You have edibles. You have resin, wax, pre-rolls. This is cartel vape juice that I'm about to consume from the Sina Lower Cartel. Memorial Day weekend is almost here, and it's time to kick off summer right. When I'm getting ready

for the first big weekend of summer, total wine and more is my go-to, especially when I'm firing up the grill with family. I'll grab refreshing beers, easy drinking wines, and some hard seltzers for the cooler. And with everything that goes into summer, it's nice knowing you're getting the lowest prices.

Total Wine and More. Your Memorial Day made easy. Shop total wine and more in store or online. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly must be 21. But while we were there, this kid pulls up on a motorcycle, walks in, and drops this grocery bag full of pre-rolled joints off to the clerks behind the counter. And later on, we got to see where those were made. And that was at one of the many trap houses. that now operate in Kulia Khan. So the cartels used to exclusively grow outdoor pot in these gigantic fields in the mountains, the Sierra Madres, surrounding the city of Kulia Khan.

But now that there's way less pot to export to the U.S., what they've done is they've moved a lot of their operations indoors, and it's made the pot a lot better, obviously. And that's what we did later that night. We went to check out one of these indoor grow operations, one of these trap houses, inside the sea. city. It looks like a house I lived in college. No furniture just trap. Pure trap everywhere. Fucking money.

Yeah, it's so cool. Trapeno. So, I mean, we're here. This is like a spot. It's a trap spot. It's a trap spot in the middle of the city, like the middle of a nice little, middle-class neighborhood. And it's some young guys, and they're fucking growing weed in one room. They're turning it into edibles and pre-rolls in the other room. And, you know, they're getting high and watching cartoons. this one. So it makes me, I'm not gonna lie, I haven't missed me in a drug dealer in a long time until I got the Kulia Khan and it's, it's giving me nostalgia. And they are the weed factories and the trap house that we went to specialized in pre-rolled joints and making edibles. So there was fruit

loops and baking stuff, flour everywhere. It looked like your mom's kitchen and it was just a bunch of young men in Kulia Khan who specialized in growing weed, pressing it down, and cooking it and converting it into products that get sold at dispensaries. Now, of course, one of the dudes has a Mac 11, right, an Uzi. So that was a little weird. But for the most part, I mean, these guys were not gangsters, not even close. They were simply sponsored, funded by one of the families that control Kulea Khan. And if anybody fucked with them, if they got raided by the military, if they got robbed,

what they would do is go visit the cartels and say, you know, you need to help us. And in a minute, they would get their shit back. And that's why everybody involved in this stuff in Kulia Khan feels absolutely safe. Like nobody dared get out of line. As I said before, they are the law. And I mean it, like they have no problem in making people disappear and killing people corporal punishment. It's real like village law down there.

But you don't feel like it when you're really. in one of these grow houses. It was just friendly guys drinking beer, constantly smoking weed, sniffing coke, and staying up all night, making joints, and pressing weed into edibles. This is like what started, what Cinaloa is now, way back in the day, like the early 70s, they were the ones that affected growing up. And yeah, this is how everything that the Cinaloa organization is now started with this kind of wheat. Still, it was a profitable operation. One of the guys told me that those pre-rolls...

Okay, so they said they sell about three to five thousand of these a week. This sells for about seven bucks, American. So that's 20 grand a week, it's 80 grand a month. They're doing about a million dollars a year in fucking $7 gram joints. And you multiply that by hundreds and hundreds of these different operations throughout the city. It doesn't quite make up for the money that the cartels have lost from exporting pot to the U.S., but it is a big cash jolt that a lot of the other cartels throughout Mexico don't have. And of course, what this does is it puts Sinaloa at the forefront of the legal market

once it actually becomes legal throughout Mexico. So, of course, what they'll do is they'll expand to other territories, just like they've done with their illegal drugs. And it makes a perfect cover for laundering their profits from other drugs. It's cash business. It'll always be a cash business. So you can imagine that money from cocaine, fentanyl, meth, heroin can easily be washed throughout these soon-to-be legal dispensaries that they're operating. Everybody's been saying for years that once the war on drugs has ended in the United States, it will put Mexican cartels out of business. But as you can see, with marijuana, that's not really true. I mean, especially with Sinaloa and the Haleisco, theuebo-Halisco cartels, they will just evolve and adapt. And that's what they're doing with

marijuana. It's the testing ground for dominating the legal market, which will be an illegal business still for them because they'll be laundering their profits from other drugs through it. They will be muscling legitimate people who might want to open up dispensaries or grow up, They will just be threatening them, pushing them out of the game. So it will be a cartel still. It will be monopolized by the cartels. And they could end up making more money in the long term. So these guys are just unbeatable.

I mean, Kulia Khan especially, it's like Silicon Valley of the drug trade. And everybody is thinking of new ideas and ways to evolve and expand and not only survive, but thrive. And that's exactly what's going on. And they are actually, it's very interesting to know that they're actually super pro-legalization. I mean, one will think, like, they don't want it to be legalized so they can still make money out of it. But they're actually trying to push for legalization. You know, they're like, what the government is leaving is staying behind.

They don't want to fucking legalize weed. We don't give a shit, man. We're just going to set up all in shops and start selling it. And be ready for when the wheat is legal. Right. We're just going to jump in. Of course. Of course.

What the organization believes is happening or the pushback they think is getting Mexico against legalizing weed is actually a U.S. strategy, right? They said like, okay, they're making a lot of lobby in Mexico so Mexico doesn't legalize weed. So they will be the only ones who actually have legal weed. Now, what politically would the U.S. have to gain from that? What they believe is that it's mostly an economical issue. Like we're gonna own the, you used to own the wheat market, now we own it, you know.

We've come a long way from the days when I would drive 10 hours from Portland down to Mendocino and Humboldt counties to buy my pot from these Mexican senaloan growers who would risk everything to grow outdoor weed on federal land. And while that's happening still, it happens less and less. A lot of these growers from Senaloa are opting to not go to the other side, as they say, but to actually stay put in Mexico and be at the forefront and become the pioneers of the legal weed market, which will be a billion dollar economy once it's fully legalized down there. The Sinaloa drug cartel not only dominates the drug market, they invent the drug market. All right, you guys, that's been today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in.

Make sure to check out part two next week where we continue our journey investigating the Sinaloa cartel. make sure to like and subscribe, turn on alerts. And for a lot of this raw footage and behind the scene stuff that we filmed while we were in Mexico, subscribe to the Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Connect Show. All right, you guys, we'll see you next week. Take care.