Police in India Keep Seizing Large Quantities of Weed

In a major downer for potheads everywhere, police in India have been seizing large quantities of cannabis of late. And now, they’ve caught over 3,000 kgs worth of it in Odisha on June 9. Busting a major drug racket that involved 34 people selling cannabis worth Rs 2 crore, this is the third weed bust that’s happened this week.

On June 4, the Assam police posted a picture of all the pot they had caught, flexing how they had managed to seize about 590 kgs of it through a Twitter post with the perfect amount of shade. They were able to catch over 50 cartons of cannabis through an operation that used intelligence inputs.

Soon after that, the Hyderabad Task Force Police arrested two dealers and got hold of 200 kgs of ganja. The dealers caught said they were doing so to earn an income in an economy that is still suffering from rampant unemployment. In Odisha, the dealers were caught because they attacked the police force when their weed delivery was intercepted on June 6, prompting the cops to form a 75-member team to catch the culprits. But even so, this is the 48th case in Odisha’s Malkangiri district, with over 12,000 kgs of ganja being caught by the cops this year itself. And this is just in one district in one city.

Whether it’s growing ganja in their homes by using hydroponics, trading it over the untraceable dark web or simply telling the cops it’s cholera medicine for cattle, Indians seem to be finding ways to escape the system and score big. But with all these latest instances of dealers and their stash getting caught, is a crackdown on cannabis on the cards once again? And does this mean mariijuana is soon going to be in short supply?

We asked around and found out from a Mumbai-based dealer that while major busts have been happening over the week, the scene in big cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Pune still haven’t been affected and scoring continues to be relatively easy. However, after hearing about all these incidents, our source was mainly worried about escalating pot prices, thanks to huge quantities of it being confiscated.

From a scientist recreating the strain Bob Marley used to smoke to studies that suggest smoking up improves everything from anxiety to sex, there’s been an increasingly supportive attitude towards cannabis at a global level. But despite supporters who say it has historically been part of India’s culture to those who favour legalisation for economic reasons to tackle the country’s agrarian crisis, weed remains an illegal substance in our country.

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VICE India in no way endorses the illegal usage of marijuana or other narcotics. The content above is intended for informational purposes only, and is not meant to propagate the use of any illegal substance. See Terms of Use for more.