132,000 cannabis plants destroyed in 2015-16 national operation
New Zealand Police destroyed about 132,000 cannabis plants and seized almost 80 kg of dried cannabis during the six-month National Cannabis and Crime Operation over the 2015-16 growing season. Officers arrested 572 people and seized 173 firearms, four methamphetamine labs and other drugs in what police called a whole-of-crime campaign.
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New Zealand Police ran a six-month National Cannabis and Crime Operation over the 2015-16 growing season, using helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft with Royal New Zealand Air Force assistance to find and destroy outdoor crops.[1]Announcing the results on 23 May 2016, police said the operation, codenamed Operation Dee, destroyed about 132,000 plants and seized or destroyed almost 80 kg of dried cannabis, the second-highest recovery in nine years.[1]
Officers arrested 572 people and seized 173 firearms, the most since the 2011-12 operation, alongside four methamphetamine laboratories with almost a kilogram of methamphetamine, 195 ecstasy tablets, 633 LSD tablets and 56 morphine sulphate tablets.[1]Detective Inspector Craig Scott called it a “whole of crime” operation aimed at growers and dealers, saying commercial cultivation links to wider crime.[1]Police estimated the destroyed plants prevented more than $500 million of socio-economic harm.[1][2]
New Zealand Geographic later reported the same operation with a dried-cannabis figure of 92 kg rather than the police figure of almost 80 kg.[2]
Case data
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