Shane Su­perville

A day af­ter Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro re­port­ed that a dra­mat­ic drop in the in­flux of il­le­gal drugs may prompt some per­sons to grow and cul­ti­vate their own prod­uct lo­cal­ly, a 56-year-old Ari­ma man was ar­rest­ed with the pos­ses­sion of a quani­ty of mar­i­jua­na plants.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers of the High­way Pa­trol Task Force re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that a man had guns and am­mu­ni­tion on King Street, Ari­ma, on Wednes­day and went to the scene.

On ar­rival they found a man and searched the home where they found 43 mar­i­jua­na plants.

Ac­cord­ing to the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act 2019, cul­ti­vat­ing more than four plants car­ries a penal­ty of ten years on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion or a fine of $750,000.

The man was held and was ex­pect­ed to be charged for cul­ti­va­tion of a dan­ger­ous drug, name­ly mar­i­jua­na.

Dur­ing the week­ly po­lice me­dia brief­ing on Tues­day Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro re­port­ed that on­go­ing US mil­i­tary strikes in the south­ern Caribbean has led to a “mea­sur­able im­pact” on the lo­cal drug trade.

Gue­var­ro said this con­clu­sion was based on as­sess­ments done by var­i­ous in­tel­li­gence agen­cies in­clud­ing the Spe­cial Branch, the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) and the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

He not­ed that as the sup­ply has de­creased lo­cal­ly, there would be peo­ple try­ing to im­port mar­i­jua­na seeds from abroad to cul­ti­vate their own strains in T&T.

“There are men look­ing for a par­tic­u­lar breed of seeds from abroad to bring in­to T&T, but we treat­ing with that al­ready and with mar­i­jua­na erad­i­ca­tion in all those dif­fer­ent ar­eas,” Gue­var­ro said on Tues­day.

One se­nior of­fi­cer as­signed to a spe­cial­ist in­ves­tiga­tive po­lice unit con­firmed that there has been a drop in the in­flux and ex­por­ta­tion of drugs through T&T, not­ing that crim­i­nals may try to ob­tain the drugs lo­cal­ly “one way or an­oth­er.”