VLADIVOSTOK, August 12 (RIA Novosti, Anatoly Ilyukhov) - Russian police have destroyed 17 hemp fields in an operation that started in Russian Far Eastern Maritime Territory in late May 2005, a spokesman said Friday.
"The police alone have discovered over 30 major hemp-cultivating sites in two months," the representative of the Maritime Territory's Federal Drug Control Service said. "Seventeen wild hemp fields were destroyed through the joint efforts of the law enforcement officials and power agencies."
The source specified that the police had destroyed over 34 million bushes of hemp with an aggregate weight of more than one and a half metric tons and opened more than 330 cases on illicit cultivating and trafficking.
A spokesman for the State Drug Control Agency said 26 million bushes of Manchurian cannabis had been destroyed with the assistance of the military and local administration.
During the second stage of the anti-drug operation, which will begin in late August, the police will take efforts to discover where this year's marijuana crop is being stored and processed. Officers will also aim to close channels used for the trafficking of locally produced drugs from the provinces to towns and cities in the Maritime Territory.
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