HASH BROWNED

Cops Burn $500,000 Marijuana Crop in Weekend

CANNABIS WORTH half a million dollars has been destroyed by police
raids in the Wakatipu and Otago-Southland.

Drug crops in Arthurs Point, Arrowtown, Kingston and Glenorchy, due
to be harvested this month, were slashed and burnt during a two-day
mission last weekend.

The plants were among an estimated half-million dollar haul by police
across Otago and Southland.

Wellington police ran the operation as part of a nationwide drug
recovery drive.

Queenstown police spent all Saturday and Sunday being winched into
Wakatipu plan-----tations by a New Zealand Air Force Iroquois helicopter.

The Wakatipu crops - destined for sale to local users - were
pin-pointed months earlier by a fixed-wing spotter plane.

Queenstown detective Grant Miller says it's likely the Wakatipu crops
were planted by resort residents.

Most plots were more isolated than in the past, he says, with growers
prepared to walk long hours to maintain them. A Queenstown police
source, who rode in the chopper, says the astonished pilot wondered
how growers managed to get access.

"The chopper pilot said to me 'If they're going to go to all this
trouble we may as well just let them have it'," he says.

"He was saying 'Where's the road? How do they get up there?

It's just ridiculous - there must be a road somewhere'.

"I said, 'There's no road'."

Miller says the cannabis plants were "high quality" after a season of
relatively good growing conditions.

The largest plot in the Wakatipu was 70 plants and in one instance a
single plant was discovered, Miller says.

Prosecutions may follow the drug mission, Miller says, and police are
still waiting on results of forensic evidence taken from cannabis patches.

In a similar police recovery operation a year ago, cannabis plants
with a street value of $850,000 were destroyed.

Miller says on that occasion 95 per cent of the plants found in the
Otago-Southland wide swoop were in the Wakatipu.

This time, however, they were more evenly spread around the region.

Dunedin-based detective sergeant Greg Dunne says the cannabis was
probably planted in September and it's likely the growers planned to
harvest it some time this month.

It's difficult to determine how much cannabis "is out there" overall, he says.

Growers tended to favour indoor hydroponic growing methods, despite
higher set-up costs and increased risk of a conviction. "There's an
increased risk of getting caught, whereas the risk with the outdoors
is only going to and from it," Dunne says.

"[But] as a general trend in the drug scene there's a general
tendency for people to grow indoors because of the risk of [outdoor
crops] being seen by enforcement agencies or members of the public."

In a separate cannabis-related matter on Tuesday, Queenstown property
manager Melvin James Ronald Thomas was granted leave to apply for
home detention when sentenced in the High Court at Invercargill to 18
months' jail for cannabis charges.

He was busted in Queenstown police's Oper---ation Skylark last year
and convicted on two charges of selling cannabis and one of
possession of cannabis for supply.

Thomas said in his evidence he denied being a drug dealer but
admitted being a long-term cannabis user.