Bhang busts: What's behind the sudden increase in number of arrests, seizures?

Law enforcement authorities are overworking in as far as arresting weed farmers, peddlers, traffickers and smokers goes.

Barely a day goes by without reports of police seizing several sacks or rolls, or uprooting plants of this prohibitive substance that now a topic in mainstream politics courtesy of one outlier presidential candidate.

The latest incident- reported on Wednesday, July 20, involved minors who attempted to board a Nairobi-bound bus in Unguja, Siaya County.

A suitcase with 347 rolls of bhang was turned in to police after hawk-eyed bus crew picked out the suitcase and subsequently question its owners who took off in the nick of time.

The National Police Service (NPS) also reports that they are on the trail of one Joseph Ng'ang'a whose farm in Solai, Nakuru County, had 364 stems of bhang.

On Sunday July 17, police in Voi, Taita Taveta County, confiscated 4,980 rolls of bhang whose street value was placed at KSh4.5 million. The prohibited substance was being ferried from Nairobi to Mombasa. It was packed in six 90-kilogram sacks.

Other recent bursts

On July 16, police at Ruai, Njiru sub-County uprooted mature Marijuana crop from the compound of a residential house.

On July 6, Kipchumba Michael Kibet went into hiding as soon as police stumbled upon a marijuana ‘green house’ inside his rental house in Elgon View Estate, Eldoret Town.

On the last weekend of June, five suspected Marijuana traffickers were arrested along the Moyale-Isiolo Highway in Samburu County. Forty one stones of the drug -with a street value of KSh2,576,000, was recovered.