Italian police find ton of hashish in Dutch truck

Italian police on Saturday uncovered a ton of hashish worth 15 million euros ($19 million) in a frozen foods truck carrying potatoes and arrested its Dutch driver, the police said in a statement.The police said they became suspicious when they noticed the truck on the outskirts of Rome as part of an anti-drug investigation and found out that it was very far from its registered delivery point.Behind the potato boxes being shipped from the Netherlands they found “various boxes containing hashish in bars weighing around 100 grams each and wrapped in cellophane,” the statement said.“The total quantity of drugs found was around one ton,” it added.Police spokesman Alessandro Langello said: “The investigation is ongoing. We are trying to uncover the criminal organisation behind this shipment.” Dutch authorities in 2011 busted a large-scale operation to export homegrown cannabis from the Netherlands to countries including Italy.Although cannabis is technically illegal in the Netherlands, the country in 1976 decriminalised possession and sale of less than five grammes (around a sixth of an ounce) of the drug.