According to Renato Furtado, coordinator of the Polícia Judiciária (PJ) in the Azores, the arrest for alleged drug trafficking took place as part of preventive measures at drug entry points in the archipelago.
“It was following a preventive action to combat drug trafficking that we were able to identify and arrest these two women and seize this very significant quantity of drugs,” he stated to Lusa.
Each woman had 16 kilograms of hashish in her possession, and one also had a kilogram of cocaine.
This quantity of drugs would be sufficient for 172,000 individual doses.
“If we are talking in terms of days of consumption, it is enough drugs for 70,000 days of use,” specified Renato Furtado.
The PJ’s coordinator in the Azores noted that the two women, Portuguese nationals residing on the mainland, had no criminal records.
The detainees, aged 33 and 43, were brought before a judicial inquiry and remanded in custody.
In recent years, the PJ has “seized quite significant quantities of drugs” in the Azores.
This year alone, as part of the fight against international drug trafficking, the various departments of the Polícia Judiciária have seized “around eight tons of cocaine” off the Azores.
In operations related to supplying consumer networks in the Azores, as in the case of these two arrests, “more than 75 kilograms of drugs” were seized in 2025.
