Police concern soft-touch hashish legal guidelines are driving spike in smuggling
Soft-touch cannabis laws overseas are driving an ‘exponential’ spike in the number of plane passengers trying to smuggle the drug in their suitcases, police fear.
Border officials have already seized 15 tons of cannabis from passengers at UK airports so far this year – a 650 per cent increase on the total amount seized in 2022.
Arrests of air passengers importing cannabis have similarly skyrocketed 700 per cent – from 17 people in 2022 to 136 in 2023, climbing higher this year with 378 people arrested so far.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) said drug couriers have been caught returning from countries such as the US, Canada and Thailand, where cannabis is easier to obtain legally.
Drug gangs are thought to increasingly favour cannabis grown in countries where it has been decriminalised because it is cheaper to obtain and they can market it as a ‘superior’ product.
Soft-touch cannabis laws overseas are driving an ‘exponential’ spike in the number of plane passengers trying to smuggle the drug in their suitcases, police fear (stock image)
The smugglers – who have often been persuaded to carry the drugs by organised crime gangs – are now so ‘brazen’ they are said to barely bother concealing the drug in their suitcases.
Charles Yates, deputy director of borders and commodities at the NCA, said: ‘We’ve seen an exponential rise in people flying into the UK with cannabis stowed in their luggage [and] are rapidly seeing more people brazenly walk through airports with suitcases full of cannabis.
‘Subsequently, there has been a dramatic uptick in arrests for the importation of cannabis – already this year more than double those for the whole of 2023.’
Smugglers were predominantly British and American nationals last year, the NCA said, but have largely been British, Malaysian and Canadian this year.
Around half of all arrests this year (184) related to cannabis originating in Thailand, while 75 arrests related to cannabis coming from Canada and 47 from the US.
Typically the suspects are found carrying between 15kg and 40kg of the drug in their suitcases.
The NCA said drugs gangs often downplay the risk of imprisonment when recruiting couriers, telling them they are unlikely to face more than a fine if caught.
Border officials have already seized 15 tons of cannabis from passengers at UK airports so far this year – a 650 per cent increase on the total amount seized in 2022 (stock image)
Cannabis is said to remain the most widely used illegal drug in the UK, with approximately 2.5 million people aged 16 to 59 reporting using the drug in 2023.
Several seizures have led police to uncover tracking devices in the luggage, so criminals are ‘able to track their illicit loads’.
This month, 11 British passengers were caught with a total of 510kg of cannabis inside 28 suitcases at Birmingham Airport on a single day, the NCA said. The passengers had travelled from Thailand via Paris and were all arrested.
The NCA are said to be monitoring the relaxation of drug laws in other countries to see if it impacts the UK drugs trade. Germany became the largest European country to partially decriminalise cannabis in April.
