CAMP DANGWA, La Trinidad, Benguet – More than P9.4 8 million worth of marijuana plants were successfully destroyed by combined anti-narcotics and police operatives during a recent two-day marijuana eradication operations in identified marijuana-producing communities in Benguet.
Senior Superintendent Rodolfo S. Azurin, Jr., Director of the Benguet Provincial Police Office, said combined police operatives of the Regional Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operations Task Group (RAIDSOTG), Regional Public Safety Battalion (RPSB), Kapangan Municipal Police Station (MPS) and members of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency uprooted 30,000 fully grown marijuana plants and 15,000 marijuana seedlings planted in a land area of 3, 650 square meters which was found in seven (7) sites in Barangay Badeo, Kibungan Benguet specifically at Sitio Ampana and Balbalnag.
In another site of operation, Azurin disclosed personnel of Kibungan MPS wiped out three (3) different sites in Sitio Saca-ang, boundary of Barangay Sagpat and Madaymen, Kibungan, Benguet destroying 300 marijuana seedlings planted in a land area of 1, 103 square meters.
Likewise, the police official added personnel of Bakun MPS uprooted 12, 440 pieces of fully grown marijuana plants, 3, 600 pieces marijuana seedlings planted in a total land area of 2, 780 square meters which was found in nine (9) sites in Sitio Lanas, Kayapa, Bakun, Benguet.
“We continue to solicit the support of the public to provide us with the needed information on the locations of marijuana plantation sites for us to conduct our operations in order to rid the province of the illegal hemp and remove its identity as a marijuana-producing province,” Azurin stressed.
All uprooted marijuana plants were burned on site while representation was brought to the headquarters of the operating troops primarily for evidentiary purposes.
For the past several decades, Benguet has been known as the source of around 80 percent of the supply of marijuana being circulated in the country.
Azurin said marijuana cultivators are now going into the interior parts of the province so that they will not be easily apprehended by responding law enforcers for them to sustain their lucrative trade.
