Sala Krao district police and village security guards raided a marijuana patch in O’Andong commune on Tuesday morning after locals tipped them off.[1] Officers arrested 54-year-old Meal Pun at his home for cultivating cannabis.[2] Pun said he had grown the plants for a long time for personal use, and police said young villagers sometimes smoked with him.[1] Police sent Pun to the Pailin provincial police station with the uprooted plants, two pipes, a knife and a chopping board allegedly used to process the plants.[1] Deputy provincial police chief Un Serey Roth said Pun was released yesterday after signing an agreement not to plant marijuana anymore and that the plants would be destroyed.[1] Another deputy provincial police chief said Pun had been sent to his office and would appear in court once the relevant paperwork was complete.[2]

Officers found 89 marijuana plants around Pun’s home, some of them not yet fully grown.[1] Fewer than 20 of the plants were mature, and three had already been harvested and dried.[1] Officers also seized two smoking pipes and a long paring knife and cutting board used to prepare cannabis, keeping them as evidence with the plants.[2] The plants had been grown among citronella, herbs and bamboo bushes before officers uprooted them.[1]

District police said they did not know whether Pun grew the marijuana only for personal use or intended to sell it, but his actions were illegal either way.[2] Police described cannabis as an addictive substance listed in the Law on Drug Control, which bans its consumption and trafficking.[1]