Police torched the mounds of confiscated weed in Lice, a town located in a rural area in the south-eastern Turkish province of Diyarbakır, leaving locals “dizzy, queasy, and, in some cases, delusional”.
“The smell of drugs has been enveloping the district for days,” one man complained to local media. “We cannot open our windows. Our children got sick, we are constantly going to the hospital.”
Authorities had set fire to the drugs, worth an estimated 10 billion Turkish Lira (or about €230m) that had been gathered from around the province in 2023 and 2024.
The News in 90 Seconds – Wednesday, 7th of May
The massive drug disposal operation, conducted on April 18 by the Lice District Gendarmerie Command, sent thick smoke billowing across the town for days.
The ensuing haze permeated the town of 25,000 people, TurkiyeToday.com reports, with families forced to keep windows closed and avoided venturing outside their THC-saturated town.
However, cops then arranged bags of cannabis into letters spelling out the town’s name before setting them ablaze, a display that Yahya Öğer, Chairman of the Yeşil Yıldız Association, said was “unacceptable” and “lacking professionalism.”
“This was perhaps done as a preventive measure to deter, but the fact that it was destroyed in the city centre could cause serious discomfort to people due to the smoke of burned hemp,” Öğer said.
He suggested that in future drug disposals should take place in factories with filtered chimneys, instead of where people live and breathe.
“As you know, the destruction or burning of such herbs can also cause serious intoxication,” Öğer added. “Just as tobacco harms passive smokers when used in a closed area, the smoke released by such narcotic substances when disposed of can cause serious discomfort.
“It can make people drunk, dizzy, nauseated, and cause hallucinations.”
Oger’s organisation has offered to provide educational programmes about drug awareness for law enforcement and schools.
Despite the widespread impact, no formal complaints have been filed with the association, though residents continue to report health issues to the media and local organisations.
The operations that led to the seizure resulted in legal proceedings against 1,941 individuals, according to the governor’s office.
In 2020, security forces seized 1.1 million cannabis plants and 756 kilos of heroin in Lice, which was among the biggest of its kind in what has been described as a drug hot spot.
Gendarmerie troops found the cannabis in a counterterrorism operation in Lice’s Kıralan and Yukarı Duru neighborhoods, the local governorate announced at the time.
The operation against “narco-terrorism” aims to shed light on drug smugglers and producers with the terrorist group PKK which has long been active in Diyarbakır and the wider south-eastern region.
The cannabis plants were found in 13 different spots while heroin was discovered hidden in sacks in a land plot dotted with bushes. Security forces also discovered a long water hose hidden inside the cannabis fields for irrigation. Authorities demolished the plants by burning them.
Security forces frequently carry out operations against PKK-linked cannabis cultivation areas in rural Diyarbakır.
The PKK is accused of smuggling drugs to and from Europe as well as cultivating cannabis in south-eastern Turkey as a way to fund its illegal activities.
A Turkish police report released last year said the terrorist group produces heroin in laboratories in its camps in northern Iraq and sells it to Europe.
The 25,000 residents of a small Turkish town got accidently high after police burned more than 20 tons of seized cannabis. Read More
