PHANGNGA: Authorities destroyed about 800 kratom (Mitragyna speciose) plants allegedly grown by the son of a local politician on more than five rai of land in Kapong district on Wednesday.
Governor Siripat Patakul was tipped off about the kratom plants and ordered a combined force of naval personnel and police to raid the farm located on a mountainside in tambon Moh.
The team found about 800 kratom plants aged about five years old with trunks measuring about 13 centimetres wide. The krathom was farmed in five plots totalling five rai.
The authorities used chainsaws to cut them down and poured herbicide on the stumps to prevent them re-growing.
The slashed kratom, weighing more than 2.5 tonnes, were loaded onto five pickup trucks which took the illegal plants away. It was the largest haul of kratom plants destroyed in Phangnga this year.
Capt Apichart Worapamorn, deputy chief of the Internal Security Operations Command office in Phangnga, said the Royal Forest Department was also checking whether the kratom farm was located on Sor Por Kor land reform plots and if so, whether the owner had obtained permission to use them.
That land is reserved for landless farmers and permission must be secured before it can be used.
No one was arrested in the raid yesterday although a search of the workers’ living quarters on the farm uncovered three handguns.
