Morocco’s Casablanca port customs seized late Thursday more than 32.2 tons of cannabis resin in three 40-ft containers bound for the port of Valencia of Spain, local MAP news agency reported on Friday.

It is the largest drug haul in the Casablanca port in five years after authorities seized in 2005 a 16-ton drug cargo, the report said.

The banned substance, known locally as chira and with a street value of 33 million Dirhams (about 3.9 million U.S. dollars), was concealed in aluminium cans destined for recycling.

The cargo was registered in the name of a Casablanca-based company and declared as used cans sent to a Spanish company specialized in fabricating drink cans.

The forwarding agent was arrested pending interrogation, the report said.

Considered to be the world’s second largest provider of hashish after Afghanistan, Morocco has recently toughened clampdown on drug-trafficking and cultivation.

The country said it has slashed by 65 percent the production of cannabis in 2008, halved the cannabis-growing lands to 60,000 ha between 2003 and 2008, and pledged to further reduce the cultivated lands to 55,000 ha in 2009.

via Largest drug haul in five years seized in Morocco | Eviewweek.com.