A Coromandel couple were having dinner when police flew a helicopter over their property to spray three cannabis plants.

It comes as several police districts resume aerial search operations, a year after top brass scrapped the annual eradication operation at a national level.

The couple, who Stuff has agreed not to name, were having dinner about 6pm on Wednesday when they spotted a helicopter they had noticed flying down a nearby valley coming towards their home.

'It got closer and closer and then just zoomed in on this little hill about 80 metres from our house and sprayed three small cannabis plants that were in pots up on the hills,” the man says.

'We could see the pilot, he could see us, we waved to them, and he was just sitting there above the hills spraying the plants and then just buggered off.”

The man underwent an operation to remove cancer a few months ago.

Following the operation, he was given tramadol and codeine, but did not like the drugs and stopped using them after he got home.

He purchased some cannabidiol oil for about $150 a bottle and found it worked better for him.

'We did a bit of investigation and figured out we could probably make something ourselves,” he says.

The couple bought some seeds and started growing cannabis. The man's wife, who has an autoimmune disease, also used it to help with her condition and to help her sleep. They did not sell any cannabis, but gave some for free to 'elderly relatives”, the man said.

He describes the ordeal as 'pretty horrific and distressing”.

'The spraying of our plants seems like overkill, we would've been happy if someone had knocked on our door and said ‘hey we've had a complaint' or something … we would've destroyed them if they asked us to,” he says.

'We're just a mother and father … good community jobs, we work in the community, we help the community with sports, we're both in community groups and are working for non-profit organisations. We don't understand why we got targeted in a distressing manner.”

Police recently say they were targeting large-scale commercial growers who supplied gangs with cannabis to sell into communities for profit.

'Drugs are known drivers of crime and revenue streams for organised crime groups. Police's focus is to reduce the impacts of drug use and organised crime in our communities by stopping this supply.”

The homeowner is 'disappointed” police resumed the aerial operations.

'Fair enough targeting gangs that are selling drugs, but I think we all know that's been transferred across to the methamphetamine market. I don't think gangs are really that interested in marijuana at the moment. We're certainly not a gang, we've got nothing to do with selling cannabis for profit or to buy weapons or anything like that.”

Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick, who advocated for the legalisation of cannabis, told Stuff the incident exposed 'a really poor old-school narrative”.

'This situation underlines yet again how these police chopper operations are not only a waste of time and money but literally cutting off some people's medicinal cannabis supplies.

Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick advocated for the legalisation of cannabis. Photo: Ricky Wilson/Stuff.

'New Zealanders going about their business harming nobody have had a police chopper drop into their family dinner simply because parliament continues to prefer and enable people to get legally fully blackout drunk with all the social harms that come with that instead of moderately using an evidentially less-harmful substance that 80 per cent of us will already have used by the time that we're out of our teens.”

A police spokesperson says in general, the cannabis recovery operation concentrated on large-scale commercial growers.

'However, as this work is often conducted in remote or rural areas, and from the air, smaller cannabis plots can naturally be sprayed during the discovery phase of flying operations.”

Police would not comment on any 'specific matters” relating to the operation, the spokesperson says.

-Stuff/Sam Sherwood.