American arrested for smuggling 23kg cannabis into Sri Lanka

A 31-year-old American citizen was arrested for allegedly smuggling a suitcase full of “kush" cannabis into Sri Lanka from Thailand.

The suspect, employed by a land trading company in the US, was held at the Bandaranaike airport in Colombo on Tuesday morning after he arrived on a Sri Lankan Airlines flight. He has not been named.

He was detained while trying to exit the airport through a designated business corridor at the arrival terminal, customs officials said.

The Narcotics Control Unit of Sri Lanka Customs recovered a total of 23kg of cannabis, concealed in around two dozen packets in his suitcase, according to local news website Ada Derana.

Customs officials said the estimated street value of the seized drugs was about £582,000.

The American was one of over half a dozen foreigners arrested in the first four months of this year attempting to bring cannabis into Sri Lanka from Thailand, authorities said.

Following the decriminalisation of cannabis in Thailand, additional director general of Sri Lanka Customs Seevali Arukgoda told reporters there had been a growing trend of people trying to smuggle the narcotic into the island nation in “significant quantities”.

Customs authorities also arrested four Sri Lankan citizens on Tuesday for allegedly bringing “kush” cannabis and hashish into the country. The suspects, aged 23 to 36, were caught carrying less than 500g cannabis each.

Last month, Sri Lankan authorities arrested an Indian couple for allegedly bringing "kuch" cannabis coated in chocolate and worth £50,685 into the country. The couple, accompanied by their seven-year-old child, were detained after they landed in the island nation en route to India from Thailand.

Customs officials alleged that the couple had rolled around 2kg of cannabis into small balls, wrapped the balls in polythene and coated them with chocolate. The “chocolate balls” were then wrapped in gold and silver foil to seem like real chocolate.

The chocolate coating method was so sophisticated that even sniffer dogs at the airport couldn’t pick up the cannabis scent, a Narcotic Control Unit officer told the Daily Mirror.

A 21-year-old British national was similarly detained last year for allegedly smuggling over 40kg of "kush" cannabis into the country from Bangkok.