Big Weed by Christian Hageseth

good-bye, and set out for southern Colorado in the United States of America.
    On foot.
    That’s right—he walked across the Mexico–U.S. border, dodging the U.S. Border Patrol, then walked through Arizona and New Mexico, way up into Colorado. His destination was Pueblo, Colorado, where he had some friends and contacts. There, after a number of days walking, he sold his precious cargo for more than $3,000 a pound. When the job was done and he’d rested up, he’d buy a ticket back south on a bus, his backpack stuffed with about $15,000 in cash.
    Once home, he and his family used that money to support themselves, until it was time to hit the road again. Joe made this dangerous odyssey several times through his teens. He was never caught.
    I was blown away by his story.
    Perhaps you are offended by the notion of foreign citizens exploiting gaps in the U.S. legal system to carry out illicit transactions like this. Okay. I get it. But I’d like you to try to muster some compassion for a young man who would make such an arduous trek, on foot, to help his family. When I heard his story, there were no pearl-handled semiautomatic pistols, no drug lord’s overdecorated lair, anywhere in the tale. I heard nothing but a tale of survival. Imagine being asked to hunt an animal whose meat would keep your family alive but that might kill you in the hunting. This was the risk Joe had taken as a kid. When I was riding bikes or playing football in my neighborhood, Joe was walking nearly a thousand miles and risking his life. Think what kind of life he and his family must have had, that he would be forced into such labor to satisfy our very American needs. Is Joe the cause or the result of our illegal marijuana market?
    If you can be compassionate about Joe, then I think you would agree that he was in as much danger going to his destination in the United States as he was returning home to Mexico. Numbers are sketchy on this score, but the rate at which Mexicans are losing their lives to the drug trade is obscenely high. By one estimate, fifty thousand Mexicans died violently in just six years, between 2006 and 2012.
    In both situations, Joe was carrying something of value. Marijuana on the way north and tons of cash on the way home.
    I’ll bet most of you reading this have never carried that much money on your person, even if you had access to it. It just isn’t safe. There was a time, probably as recently as the early twentieth century, when people did keep their money and precious valuables tucked under their mattresses, but those days are gone for the majority of people who live in nations with stable banking systems. I know people like to bitch about customer service and interest rates and hidden fees, but whether they’ve thought of it or not, such banking systems have imbued their lives with a good deal of security and stability. In the United States, once money is deposited in a bank, it’s insured by the federal government, and citizens can get on with their lives—pay bills, transfer funds, withdraw cash for gifts—on a whim, without ever worrying if their nest egg is safe and sound. Yes, FDIC insurance is not unlimited—only $250,000 per depositor is covered—but at least it’s there.
    But as I’m writing this, the people who work in the new legal marijuana economy do not enjoy that same privilege. They’re as vulnerable as that nervous teenager on the bus heading south to his family. At any moment, their earnings can be ripped off. At any moment, the hard work they’ve pumped into their business can disappear forever—all because their country won’t give them a simple privilege the rest of us enjoy.
    A bank account.

    The bank manager’s expression was one you never want to see: part angst, part embarrassment, part distaste. Like it was our fault that he was this uncomfortable in his job.
    We’d been banking at this particular institution for