In the last four days, the Federal Police (FP) in the state of Pernambuco, in northeast Brazil, destroyed 442,166 plants of marijuana, enough to produce one ton of the drug.
According to the FP’s spokesperson, Caetano Cysneiros, the size of this plantation field, located in hard-accessed islands of the São Francisco River, was surprising even to the 90 police officers participating on the operation to repress drug production and trafficking.
Cysneiros attributed plantation increase in the region, also known as the “marijuana polygon,” which includes ten municipalities of Pernambuco, and ten of Bahia, to the ten-month period of discontinuation of repressive measures through the use of helicopters.
Producers may be sentenced to three to 15 years in prison, for planting, cultivating, and harvesting the drug.
During last year’s operations, performed from January to May, police officers apprehended 233 thousand kilos of marijuana ready for consumption, and destroyed 320 thousand plants of the drug.
Agência Brasil