KIBUNGAN, Benguet – More than P13.7 million worth of marijuana bricks and stalks were successfully burned on site by combined police operatives and anti-narcotics agents in sitio Tableo, Badeo here over the weekend.
Senior Superintendent David Q. Lacdan, officer-in-charge of the Benguet provincial police office, said that combined personnel of the Regional Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operation Task Group (RAIDSOTG) led by Senior Inspector Melenium B Bantas, Team Leader, RAIDSOTG and under the supervision of Superintendent Ronald V. Gayo, Executive Officer RAIDSOTG, Regional Public Safety Battalion (RPSB), and Kapangan Municipal Police Station (MPS) discovered and burnt-onsite 300 kilos of Marijuana leaves in bricks form and 50 kilos of marijuana stalks which were stored in an abandoned shanty in the said place with a total Dangerous Drug Board (DDB) value of P13,750,000. 00.
Operating personnel extricated at the area together with the samples of these marijuana leaves for evidentiary purposes and proper disposition, while investigation is still ongoing to identify the personalities involved in this illegal drugs and put them behind bars.
Lacdan ordered police operatives provincewide to enhance their relationships with the people in the communities where they are assigned so that they will be able to gather more information relative to the marijuana plantation areas so that appropriate operations could be done in order to reduce the supply of the illegal hemp being traded in the different markets outside the region.
“The continuous eradication of marijuana will be one of our major programs through enhance police community relations so that cultivators will be enticed to abandon the illegal trade and be compelled to embrace alternative sources of livelihood in order to sustain the improved living condition of their families,” Lacdan stressed.
He said despite being in a temporary position, he will exert extra efforts to help the concerned local governments and agencies rid the province of the tag as the marijuana producer of the country in the coming months.
Lacdan said police operatives must continue to be on alert on the expected transport of marijuana from the remote villages of the province considering that it is now the harvest season of the illegal hemp being sold in the different parts of the lowlands and even the Metro Manila area.
By Dexter A. See
