One twenty in the morning, the Biljanini Izvori sports centre in Ohrid, a concert in progress. Officers stop 30-year-old B.R. from Prilep and find marijuana and a white powdery substance on him.

This is usually where the story ends - a charge, a detention, the next news item. This time it did not end. Inspectors obtained a court warrant and searched the flat in Ohrid where the suspect was staying together with two other men from his home town. In the flat they found more marijuana, a large quantity of pills, grinders with cannabis residue, a glass container with mushrooms and other items suspected of originating from criminal activity.

B.R. (30), G.J. (32) and S.N. (33), all residents of Prilep, have been taken into custody. They are being held at the Ohrid police station, and once the case is fully documented they face charges of unauthorised production and distribution of narcotic drugs.

The difference between „caught with drugs at a concert” and „caught with drugs at a concert, then a whole pharmacy found in the flat” is the difference between one user and one supply chain. That is the entire quality of this operation - the police did not stop at the first thing that landed in their hands.

The same day, in Skopje, at various locations, five more people were detained with white powder, brown powder and marijuana found on them. So: eight detained in twenty-four hours across two cities.

Now comes the part we rarely see. These numbers are published by the police. What nobody publishes is what happens to the cases six months later - how many charges turned into indictments, how many indictments into verdicts, and how many quietly evaporated along the way. The summer season on Lake Ohrid is the biggest market for everything that gets sold in this country, including what is not supposed to be sold. Operations like this are good. Operations alone do not change a season.