A team of Anti-Narcotics detectives, AP Officers attached at Kedong field training camp and the Naivasha OCPD February 11 destroyed bhang valued at Ksh 27 Million at the Kedong Ranch.
The team arrested fourteen suspects and placed them in custody, pending further investigations.
The DCI revealed that the suspects were found at the over one-acre land at the Kedong Ranch.
The arrest was made following a tip off from a citizen who gave the DCI information about the farm through a DCI toll-free number.
The toll free number was officially launched on December 10 by James Duddridge, Minister for Africa at the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, with the aim of ensuring that crimes are quickly brought to the attention of the DCI.
This arrest comes days after a man in Gichuki village, Embu was arrested for planting bhang in his farm. He told the police that he had been growing the plant since 1972 and used it as a vegetable.
He added he was introduced to the illegal trade by a deceased forester, insisting that the drug was a traditional herb and not an illegal substance.
A study conducted by NACADA showed that bhang was the most used narcotic drug in Kenya stabilizing at one percent from 2007 to 2017.
Coast region led at two point eight percent followed by Nyanza region at two percent and then Nairobi at one point four percent. According to the data, one percent of respondents aged between fifteen years and sixty five years currently used bhang.
The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs removed the drug from its list of most dangerous drugs but NACADA has warned against assumptions that it has being legalized in the country.
“Kenya is at liberty to tighten its control on cannabis or any other substance despite the global vote to delete cannabis from schedule 1V of the convention. As such, all is not lost, the leash is still in our hand,” NACADA CEO said.
Despite the fact that the drug is illegal in the country, many people still use it and this has led to addiction for some people and imprisonment for others.
