Colombian police said they had seized four tons of marijuana that had been grown in greenhouses, an indication of increased sophistication on the part of drug traffickers.
The shipment, with a street value of some four million dollars, was found in a truck in the city of Cali and had been bound for the Pacific port city of Buenaventura, police General Miguel Angel Bojaca said.
He added that the entire shipment had been grown in greenhouses with hydroponic technology designed to maximize the drug’s potency and value.
“The new success of the hydroponic marijuana worries us,” Bojaca told local reporters, adding that police had seized 28 tons of it the previous year.
In November Colombian police said they had seized four tons of pot in the southwest of the country without specifying how it had been grown.
At that time Colombia said it had seized a total of 200 tons since the start of 2010, an increase of 38 percent from the same period in the previous year.
Colombia meanwhile remains the world’s top cocaine producer, with 410 metric tons in 2009, the latest year for which the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has figures.