Police raid $50m marijuana crop
By Martin Chulov
January 30, 2004
NOT since the days when the NSW Riverina was awash with marijuana have police found a plantation to match the haul they unveiled in isolated woodland near Dubbo yesterday.
In a throwback to when the Mafia ran a feudal carve-up of dope grown near Griffith and supplied the eastern seaboard in the late 1970s, more than 30,000 plants with an estimated value of $50 million were seized for destruction in a day-long harvest.
The similarities extend beyond the size of the operations. The Dubbo booty was also the yield of a highly organised and professional syndicate, one which probably dominates the dope trade in Sydney and the other eastern capitals.
It was within striking distance of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, close to a junction of main highways that service thousands of semi-trailers daily.
A total of 12 people were arrested shortly after 6am, among them sentries, crop keepers and three alleged ringleaders.
The plantation had remained undetected largely due to an extensive camouflage operation involving canopies which made it hard to spot the plants even with low, slow flyovers.
"Most of the plants seized today were at the most valuable growth stage," NSW Police Drug Squad commander, Detective Superintendent Paul Jones, said.
"They had put in pumps, set up tanks and gone to an enormous amount of work."
Yesterday afternoon, up to 200 officers were hauling metre-high plants from the ground before poisoning them and piling them up for burning over the weekend.
To do that, police must first be granted an exemption from the total fire ban enforced around Dubbo, which has missed widespread rains that have left all the western rivers in flood.
Superintendent Jones said the markets for marijuana throughout NSW and Victoria would be significantly disrupted by the bust.
"This is a very large crop, and when we take these sorts of players and quantities out of the market we would be disappointed if it didn't make a significant impact.
"Where it was going to end up is something we will look at down the track."
One firearm was seized on the property and police are exploring links between this operation and other elements of organised crime.
Superintendent Jones confirmed that at least two of the men arrested were likely to face trafficking charges that carry life prison terms.
Twenty-five years ago, Griffith, about 400 kilometres south of Dubbo, was the centre of a brutal and lucrative Mafia-based drug war. Like Dubbo, the dope was secreted in state forests and canopied private properties that could not be detected from the air.
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8532339%5E421,00.html
Second bust, bigger than Dubbo, in 2 days.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
