Police in Spain make largest-ever cannabis seizure

Spanish police said over the weekend they had completed the largest international cannabis seizure.

The Guardia Civil announced on Saturday that it had dismantled an organization that was storing more than 32 tons of bud across the country in Toledo, Ciudad Real, Valencia and Asturias.

The raid was known as “Operation Jardines”.

“The Guardia Civil has seized the largest stash of packaged marijuana ever found. Operation Jardines ended with the seizure of 32,370.2 kilograms of marijuana buds, the largest seizure of this substance not only in Spain but also internationally. Its equivalent in complete plants would be approximately 1,100,000 specimens,” police said.

Or, as the BBC put it, “the plants confiscated weighed roughly the equivalent of more than five adult African elephants”.

Police said that through “a complex business network, [the suspects] shipped vacuum-packed marijuana to the entire national territory as well as to Switzerland, Holland, Germany and Belgium, among other European countries.”

“The twenty detainees – nine men and eleven women between the ages of 20 and 59 – were part of an organization with offices in Toledo, Ciudad Real, Valencia and Asturias, which controlled the entire process of drug production and distribution,” police said the announcement on Saturday. “The investigation began with an inspection by the Civil Guard of several industrial hemp plantations in Villacañas (Toledo). The main subjects owned a company from which they sourced the seeds. A second transported and planted them. Another company took care of the care, maintenance, collection and drying of the samples.”

“Finally, the original company was responsible for acquiring the already dried plants with the buds and storing them in two warehouses in the province of Valencia,” they continued. “From there, the prisoners processed the genus, separating the buds and vacuuming them in different formats to send them both to places in Spanish territory and to European countries, mainly Switzerland, Holland, Germany and Belgium.”

According to police, the ensuing raid took place in Ciudad Real last month, during which agents from Toledo eventually “discovered about 37,000 plants spread out in four greenhouses and in the process of drying”.

“The three people who were present at the time of the performance were arrested. On the ship, the Guardia Civil also found four tons of marijuana bites stored in several bags. The destination of all goods were the two warehouses in Valencia,” they explained. “In this last province, the Civil Guard used 30,530 kilos of bud, 20 kilos of pollen – all vacuum packed –, 21,600 plants in the drying process and 231,200 packs of marijuana buds. Documents have also been found that prove the existence of several other plantations, processing, processing and packaging machines, emphasizing two machines for extracting pollen in particular. In this recording, 15 people were arrested.”

“Finally, the third and final phase of exploitation consisted of a new inspection in Asturias. The analysis of the plants lying there also tested positive for psychoactive. 4,000 plants were confiscated and two were arrested,” police added.

In June, lawmakers in Spain approved a measure that paves the way for medical cannabis to be available by the end of this year.

Patients with conditions including cancer, pain, endometriosis, fibromyalgia and epilepsy, among others, can get a prescription, with experts estimating hundreds of thousands of people in Spain could potentially benefit from the treatment.