At least 84 million pesos worth of marijuana plants were uprooted and destroyed during a four-day operation by police from Camp Diego Silang and Camp Oscar Florendo at the tri-boundaries of Ilocos Sur, Benguet and La Union.[1][2] La Union police director Senior Superintendent Samuel Diciano said the haul of more than 400,000 fully grown plants and 100,000 seedlings was the biggest of any operation against marijuana in the area so far.[1][2]
The plants were found by troops led by Senior Inspector Eduardo Danguecan, chief of the provincial mobile group, with the help of police assets who surveyed the boundaries of Sugpon, Ilocos Sur, Kibungan, Benguet and the mountain town of Santol, La Union.[1][2] Danguecan commanded 30 personnel in full battle gear because of armed civilians said to be working with the marijuana farmers.[1][2] A Philippine Star photographer joined the operation, which started on Thursday morning and ended on Saturday night.[1]
The troops found ten plantations in the remote villages of Licungan, Sugpon, and Mukgao, Kibungan, properly cultivated on terrain hidden below narrow stretches of high mountains covered in thick forest.[2] They stayed overnight on Thursday in a resident’s house on the bank of the Amburayan River below Mount Gorilla and Mount Palayen, and rested on Friday night in Tubaday, Santol, before reaching the plots.[1][2] After the uprooting, officers burned the plants with dry branches and leaves and dumped some into a creek below a deep ravine; samples brought down by the troops were turned over to Diciano as evidence.[1][2]
Sources quoted by the reports said a former Army man based in Baguio City and an influential person from San Gabriel, La Union, protect the planters, supplying rice, money, garden hoses and fertilizer, and buying dried leaves at 700 pesos a kilo to resell at 3,000 to 5,000 pesos a kilo to customers in Baguio, Manila and Central Luzon.[1][2]
