PARIS: French customs officials have seized seven tonnes of cannabis with a street value of €20 million euros (£15 million pounds) in the back of three vans parked on a boulevard in the chic 16th arrondissement of Paris.
President François Hollande went to the headquarters of the customs investigations unit in the Paris suburbs to personally congratulate the agents involved in the operation, saying that the haul was one of the biggest ever made in the capital.
The haul came just two days after a new law went into force that lets cannabis users pay an on-the-spot fine if caught with the drug instead of facing a court appearance.
No arrests were made when officers found the drugs in the boots of the utility vehicles in so-called “Moroccan suitcases” – jute bags lined with plastic each containing resin blocks of around 25 kilos (55 pounds).
But officials said that the haul was the result of a weeks-long investigation that had already led to the seizure of 320 kilos of cannabis in Bayonne in September and 200 kilos in Rouen earlier this month.
The estimated street value of the seizure is 20 million euros, based on the price of 2,500-3,000 euros per kilo. Last year, around 200 tonnes of illegal drugs were seized customs officers in France, about 157 tonnes of which were cannabis. That was a hike of 84% on the previous year. It says the country now has around 4.6 million occasional users and 700,000 daily consumers.
Possession of cannabis had until last week theoretically been punishable with a year in jail and a fine of up to 3,750 euros. But courts rarely imposed such sentences and instead often chose lesser punishments such as community service.
The court system is nevertheless clogged up with tens of thousands of drugs cases, and in a bid to ease the burden police officers who catch people with cannabis can now impose on on-the-spot fine. The new law came into effect on Friday. It was not clear how much the fines would be.
