The Minister for Home Affairs has expressed concerns that the cultivation and production of marijuana is no longer a police problem, but a national issue.
At a press conference, Pio Tikoduadua said in order to figure out the magnitude of drug-related problems in Fiji, he figured that we needed to get to the root cause of the problem and to as why it is prevalent and readily available on the market.
He said Kadavu was a particular area known to be cultivating and producing marijuana, Navosa was another and more recently it has come to Natewa.
“For Kadavu, I think its location is isolated in a way, and I understand why that is. A taskforce is being put together to deal with these issues and not allow for this industry to thrive.”
Tikoduadua indicated that it would be nice to gauge the number of times police have raided Kadavu for planting and cultivating marijuana and see if the number increased, decreased or stayed the same after the raids.
The Minister said he is not surprised if the numbers actually grew.
“These are an important set of data to get in order to see how it has translated into how the people in these areas lived, the lifestyle, their wealth and other things. A person close to me travelled recently to Kadavu to one particular village, she said that she saw along the coastline, the number of different fibre glass boats, that were on the beach.
“She noticed that the children bought top end juices, some things that we would never buy in Suva. This tells me how marijuana (drugs) makes a big impact in lives of people,” Tikoduadua added.
The Minister said it was also important to find out if the police raids had any effect and if it brought down the number in the cultivation and production of marijuana.