PJ police staged an operation named ‘Operation Full Moon’ to crack down on drug-trafficking and drug-taking at the festival.
Twenty-three people aged 22 to 48 were arrested inside the festival’s enclosure during the course of the event, and a panoply of drugs – allegedly being sold like food from a menu – were seized.
A statement from the PJ said the majority of those arrested were foreigners.
A wider GNR police operation that centred on the roads and vicinity around the Boom Festival, from 16 to 29 July, saw 46 people detained on suspicion of selling drugs and a further 85 people were given official warnings for taking them.
The alternative, transformational Boom Festival has in the past been named by US magazine ‘Rolling Stone’ as one of its ‘7 Wildest Transformational Festivals’.
This comes as reports emerged of drugs being sold inside the festival venue from menus in English titled ‘Happy Meal’, according to newspaper Correio da Manhã.
“The arrests took place inside the grounds of the Boom Festival in Idanha-a-Nova, in a fight against the trafficking of so-called synthetic or designer drugs, among others, which are usually consumed at this type of event”, the PJ explained.
Carried out in close coordination with the services of the Castelo Branco Public Prosecutor’s Office and with the operational help of Criminal Investigation and GNR police, among others, Operation Full Moon “was the culmination of an investigation that began three months ago, to flag and neutralise the action of individuals who travel to our country, with the sole purpose of marketing prohibited substances”, the PJ said.
In addition to the arrests, 900 individual doses of liamba, 1,800 doses of hashish, 3,650 doses of MDMA, 75 doses of cocaine, and 1,100 doses of amphetamines were seized in total, along with 1,216 ecstasy tablets, 801 LSD ‘micro-stamps’, 26 bottles of liquid LSD, 40 LSD-impregnated chewing gums, 216 grams of hallucinogenic mushrooms, 492 grams of DMT-impregnated plant substances, 130 grams Ketamine, 77 grams of opium, and 47 mescaline micropoints.
Various precision weighing scales and about €91,000 in cash were also seized, among other drug-related paraphernalia.
One of the individuals arrested has been banned from attending the BOOM Festival.