A 75-year-old man in New Zealand was recently discovered to have been growing 250 cannabis plants by local law enforcement.

The Central District Organised Crime Unit, which worked with the Royal New Zealand Air Force, received a warrant to investigate an isolated part of the Whanganui River. According to Whanganui Chronicle, the owner of the property had previously submitted an application to grow hemp in that region.

The investigation is part of an ongoing project called “Operation Emerald” that includes law enforcement targeting illegal large-scale cultivation of drugs in New Zealand. This particular location required traversing an isolated area near the small town of Raetihi and the Whanganui River, but not a destination where vehicles can be driven. Due to the remote location, the Air Force dropped officers in on March 26 to investigate.

Detective Inspector Paul Baskett told the news outlet that the targeted illegal cultivation site previously owned a license to grow hemp, but it had expired in 2021. “The team were able to establish good cause to suspect that cannabis was being grown up there in large tunnel houses,” Baskett said. 

Police found 250 cannabis plants growing in “tunnel houses,” or greenhouses, alongside a shed containing dried cannabis as well, although reports do not specify if it was only dried cannabis flower, or an assortment of dried cannabis plant material.

Currently, the unnamed 75-year-old man has been charged with illegal cannabis cultivation and was scheduled for a court hearing in the Whanganui District Court.

Operation Emerald also acted on search warrants recently in Bay of Plenty, located on the northeast side of the country. A total of 39 search warrants were conducted over the course of five days throughout the surrounding area, with 25 people arrested with a variety of charges. “Police have laid a number of drug and firearm-related charges, and further charges and arrests are expected as enquiries progress,” said District Commander Superintendent Tim Anderson about the warrants in Bay of Plenty. “Police, assisted by the Armed Offenders Squad in some cases, seized more than 80 grams of methamphetamine, $7,610, and recovered two stolen vehicles and a stolen motorbike. While executing the warrants, several loaded firearms were confiscated.”

The operation also led to the discovery of 11,000 cannabis plants that were either “sprayed, recovered, or pulled from the ground” according to a 1News report. “The plants ranged in size from seedlings to fully grown plants 2m high. Police recovered 729 plants at one Western Bay of Plenty address, 1.6kg of harvested cannabis at a Taupo property, and more than 4kg of edibles at an Eastern Bay of Plenty address,” Anderson continued. “The Greazy Dogs gang will be feeling particularly hard hit, with more than 2,500 plants removed from paddocks surrounding their gang pad and residential properties in Tauranga.”

Anderson added that the goal of these operations is to hinder the growth of illegal substances, and the warrants conducted in Bay of Plenty will have an “immediate effect” on gang activity. “Illicit drug operations on a commercial scale strengthen organised crime groups and harm our communities,” Anderson said. “The purpose of Operation Emerald isn’t to target recreational drug users—it’s to hit gangs and criminal entities, whose parasitic offending feeds off our communities. We’re thrilled to have hit their criminal networks and it’s pleasing to have results that have interrupted their offending. The large-scale production of illicit drugs is a high-risk activity and criminals arm themselves as protection. This increases the risk to innocent people and taking so many firearms out of the hands of criminals is only a good thing.”

Anderson estimated that New Zealand gangs likely receive about $406 million per year because of illegal cannabis sales. “We don’t want them here, we don’t need them here, and we will target their offending every chance we get,” Anderson concluded. “If you choose to cultivate a drug that remains illegal and if you use it to fund your criminal lifestyle and perpetuate misery in our communities, you can expect police to hold you to account and to seize illegal firearms, drugs and ill-gotten gains.”

In 2023, Operation Emerald seized or destroyed various illegal substances totaling a value of $128 million. Statistics about last year’s searches show that police found 35,097 cannabis plants (approximately 93.452 kg or 206 pounds of plant material in weight).

New Zealand’s cannabis eradication program was initially cancelled in January 2021 because it cost too much to send out helicopters and airplanes out to investigate illegal cannabis grow sites. However, the program was revived in January 2022.

Adult-use cannabis is currently illegal in New Zealand, but medical cannabis has been permitted since 2020. Meanwhile, the country’s first mushroom cultivation license was granted in October 2023. License holder Rua Bioscience is excited to offer legal psilocybin therapy options. “It is a privilege to be involved in this ground-breaking project and we are excited to be able to support this kaupapa,” said Rua Bioscience CEO Paul Naske. “It is exciting to see Australia and other jurisdictions embracing innovative and potentially life-changing medical research with psilocybin and exciting for Rua Bioscience to now be part of such a great national collaboration.”

The post 75-Year-Old New Zealand Man Arrested for Growing 250 Illegal Weed Plants appeared first on High Times.

The post 75-Year-Old New Zealand Man Arrested for Growing 250 Illegal Weed Plants appeared first on Paradise Found.

New Zealand Police National Headquarters recently brought back its cannabis eradication program, which was cancelled in January 2021. According to Stuff.co.nz, the program was costing the department more than $700,000 annually to send out helicopters and airplanes, and the program has been running for approximately 20 years. However, the department recently set aside $635,000 to fund this effort once again, which began in January 2022 and will be conducted through March. The cannabis eradication program utilizes flight vehicles to scan for large-scale illegal grow operations.

A briefing was originally published by the police department in December 2021 detailing this decision, but was only recently released to Stuff.co.nz through the Official Information Act of New Zealand. Until now, all information was withheld until the police minister had approved it. In the briefing, it states that although the program had been stopped in all 12 districts last year, the funding was still available.

With the revival of the program, now called Operation Emerald, six out of the 12 districts have opted in. “Running a nationally coordinated operation provides efficiencies in terms of negotiating a fixed-wing plane and helicopter contracts, deploying staff, provision of training for staff, and administration of the budget,” the briefing states.

However, there has been one report of an incident that involved three cannabis plants, rather than a large cultivation operation. In early February, a police helicopter flew over one couple’s property to remove three cannabis plants. “It got closer and closer and then just zoomed in on this little hill about 80 metres from our house and sprayed three small cannabis plants that were in pots up on the hills,” the individual said. “We could see the pilot, he could see us, we waved to them, and he was just sitting there above the hills spraying the plants and then just buggered off.” The individual noted that he had recently received an operation to remove cancer, and invested in a $150 cannabis oil bottle to treat the pain, instead of the tramadol and codeine he was prescribed. (His wife also suffers from an autoimmune disease, and medical cannabis helps her sleep.) As a result, he and his partner believed it would be easier and more cost effective to grow their own cannabis plants for medical use.

“The spraying of our plants seems like overkill, we would’ve been happy if someone had knocked on our door and said ‘hey we’ve had a complaint’ or something … we would’ve destroyed them if they asked us to,” he continued. “We’re just a mother and father … good community jobs, we work in the community, we help the community with sports, we’re both in community groups and are working for non-profit organizations. We don’t understand why we got targeted in a distressing manner.”

Chlöe Swarbrick, a Green Party MP and previous advocate of cannabis legalization, criticized how the plant eradication was handled. “This situation underlines yet again how these police chopper operations are not only a waste of time and money but literally cutting off some people’s medicinal cannabis supplies,” she said. “New Zealanders going about their business harming nobody have had a police chopper drop into their family dinner simply because parliament continues to prefer and enable people to get legally fully blackout drunk with all the social harms that come with that instead of moderately using an evidentially less-harmful substance that 80 percent of us will already have used by the time that we’re out of our teens.”

The focus of Operation Emerald is to target large-scale grow operations in New Zealand, but a spokesperson confirmed that it is common for smaller plants and grows to be targeted in this manner. “However, as this work is often conducted in remote or rural areas, and from the air, smaller cannabis plots can naturally be sprayed during the discovery phase of flying operations,” the spokesperson said.

The post New Zealand Police Reboot Illegal Cannabis Operation Search After Year of Inactivity appeared first on High Times.

The post New Zealand Police Reboot Illegal Cannabis Operation Search After Year of Inactivity appeared first on Paradise Found.