Weed hasn’t been truly profitable for years. It yields just enough cash to make it worth doing (i.e. it “keeps the lights on”). Cocaine has been the profit maker (or, when caught, the real loss) for the cartels. If enough weed gets through on a route regularly enough and long enough, it’s deemed safe for cocaine. Which is why weed is usually let through, in the hopes of damaging the cartels by seizing the coke.
If the weed routes do go, however, then moving real drugs becomes riskier and more important to cartels’ survival. Expect escalating violence as the cartels start to get lean and actually compete for routes.
