Cordillera police destroy more than P200 M worth of weeds

BAGUIO CITY — In a two-day operation, the Police Regional Office Cordillera destroyed marijuana plants with an estimated standard drug price of P228 million in Tinglayan, Kalinga, from 17 to 18 May.

Joint law enforcement teams discovered 10 plantation sites covering 9.5 hectares on Mount Chumanchil in Barangay Loccong, Tinglayan. They uprooted and burned a total of 1,140,000 fully grown marijuana plants, marking the largest single-operation drug eradication by the regional police force within a 48-hour period.

The operation, dubbed Oplan Revisit Everest, involved a large-scale mobilisation of regional personnel, including the provincial drug enforcement and intelligence units of Kalinga and Mountain Province, multiple municipal police stations, mobile force companies, the Regional Mobile Force Battalion 15, and specialised medical and intelligence teams. Investigators are currently conducting follow-up inquiries to identify and apprehend the individuals responsible for cultivating the illegal plantations.

After the destruction of the illegal plants, the law enforcers held a flag-raising ceremony on the mountain and planted tree seedlings across the cleared land. Officials stated that the flag-raising was intended to assert government authority over the remote area, while the tree planting was initiated to begin environmental restoration on the hillsides. The police emphasized during the ceremony that law enforcement aims to permanently reclaim the territory from illegal drug syndicates to protect local communities.