2 Dec 2009

Fiji police downsize drugs bust claims

12:33 pm on 2 December 2009

Fiji police have clarified earlier reports about the size of a huge drugs bust over the past week.

Local media had quoted the Police Commissioner Esala Teleni as saying that marijuana worth more than 50 million US dollars was confiscated from 27 farms around the country last week.

Fiji police spokesperson Ema Mua says the figure is an estimate of the street value of all the marijuana police have seized from drug growers so far this year.

"What I am saying is there is a possibility of drugs found that could make or edge the street value a little over a hundred million [Fiji dollars], because there is a continuous find. What we have found last week, plus the cash that was found up in the mountains, adds on to the amount that already existed."

Ema Mua says police have been working with the growers, who they have dubbed drug warlords, to try and stop the cultivation.

She says police believe that much of the crop is being exported.