News
Mounties seize seven tonnes of hash: enough to intoxicate the entire country

Sep 15 2010

MONTREAL – The Mounties have seized a container packed with enough hashish to intoxicate the entire country.

Police in Montreal discovered seven tonnes of hashish – or about seven million grams.

The dark, laptop-sized hash bricks were discovered in an
abandoned trailer Sunday in the city’s west end.

“It’s a big one,” RCMP spokesman Cpl. Luc Thibault said of the seizure Wednesday.

“There’s a lot of money involved in that – especially the street value. That’s for sure.”

Police have not made any arrests, but say they are investigating and hope to get leads from the public.

Officers found the slabs of hash shrouded in denim clothing and stuffed into cardboard boxes. The entire trailer was crammed with the drug.

“It’s black and compact, like Plasticine,” he said of the hash blocks, which police also refer to as cannabis resin.

Thibault indicated that this was one of the biggest hashish seizures his detachment can remember.

The Canadian population is around 33 million, which means the trailer contained over a gram of hash for every five people in the country.

Police received a call about the mysterious trucking container, which had been sitting in a suburban storage lot for several days.

“There was something suspicious so we obtained a (search) warrant,” he said.

Thibault did not want to speculate on the potential street value of the load because he said it varies across the country. He also said it depends on quality of the hash, which has not been determined.

A 2007 RCMP report on the drug situation in Canada pegged the average street price of hash at $10 per gram – at that rate, this seizure would be worth $70 million.

In all of 2007, the report said the Mounties seized just 227 kilograms of hashish.

The RCMP report indicated the demand for hash is concentrated in Quebec and Ontario, primarily in Montreal and Toronto.

Morocco, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, India and Jamaica are some of the world’s biggest hash producers, the RCMP says.

The Mounties’ website says the effects of smoking or ingesting hashish are similar to marijuana, but often more intense.