It’s been an concerning couple of weeks for the cannabis industry from a security point of view here in Washington State state and it’s only going to get worse as we roll into the holidays.
The recent stories in the news about people getting hogtied or pistol whipped to get cash and weed out of them is alarming. These criminal elements are only attracting more crimes and potentially creating copy cats. So how do we fix it? The holidays are here, crimes of opportunity will present themselves with the holiday shopping season. So how do we combat that here in Washington state? And how can we prevent this from happening to other up and coming states with medical and recreational shops to open?
In my opinion, we have to educate the public and change public perception on marijuana and a cash only businesses. The public must know and understand that marijuana is not that hard to get your hands on. Criminals and the black market are selling it everyday. On the black market, it’s cheaper because there is no quality control and there is no tax on it. Anyone with a internet connection can research how to grow and care for a marijuana plant. So the real problem isn’t the plant or the marijuana itself. It’s the cash that surrounds and attracts all these criminal minds. It’s the fact that the government isn’t allowing a reputable tax paying business to keep and store their transactions in a bank.
The longer the government and banks hold out on doing business with marijuana companies, the longer the crimes will continue to occur. Criminals think business owners and their families are taking these huge duffle bags of cash home every night. That’s just stupid. Money and product goes into a huge vault that will take you a godly amount of time to TRY to get thru. By then you have tripped a silent alarm, a secondary regular ADT type of alarms, cops are on their way and your actions have been caught on cameras. Dumb criminals think that by cutting the power, they won’t get caught. They never considered a back up system that keeps recording and sends the data to the cloud.
There has to be a better way to prevent future cannabis crimes where the potential owners of pot shops are covered and do not have to constantly worry about thief’s trying to break into their facility. The recreational 502 and medical owners that are working in this industry must understand the risks and be willing to take certain security measures if they are to survive such brutal tactics.
