Travellers are being tempted to smuggle suitcases stuffed full of cannabis into British airports under the false pretence they won’t get caught.
Police have seen an ‘exponential’ rise in so-called ‘cannabis couriers’ who are brazenly trying to flood the UK with drugs hidden in luggage and even children’s cases.
Passengers are being tricked into thinking UK authorities will go soft on them and let them off with just a fine – but instead land themselves with hefty prison sentences.
Footage released by the National Crime Agency (NCA) – Britain’s answer to the FBI – showed one female drug mule being apprehended after attempting to smuggle two suitcases full of cannabis into Heathrow.
Chelsea Allingham, a 40-year-old Canadian national, had just got to her hotel bar to enjoy a celebratory drink for her troubles when NCA officers swooped in and arrested her in May. She was jailed for 10 months.
And in May this year, 51-year-old Spanish national Fernando Mayans Fuster was caught at Manchester Airport with eight suitcases containing 158 kilos of the drug.
He had arrived on a flight from Los Angeles and it is believed the haul is one of the largest passenger seizures of its kind at the airport.
He was jailed on July 19 for three years and four months.
This month alone, 11 British passengers travelling from Thailand were arrested at Birmingham airport when Border Force officials allegedly found 510 kilos of cannabis in their bags.
Law enforcement believe decriminalisation of cannabis abroad could be behind the huge rise in cannabis couriers after the amount of marijuana seized at airports tripled in the past year.
They also fear passengers are being tricked into thinking Britain has relaxed drug laws which could see them left off with just a fine.
But the NCA’s deputy director Charles Yates warned today that the reality is very different, with 378 arrests for importing cannabis this year and 15 tonnes of cannabis with a street value of £150 million being seized.
Authorities urged travellers to ‘think very carefully’ before running the risk of a ‘life-changing prison sentence’, with convicted traffickers facing up to 14 years behind bars.
Tim Kingsbury, regional director of Border Force south, today issued a stark warning to would-be smugglers: ‘You will get caught.’
Border officials have already seized 15 tonnes of cannabis with a street value of £150 million 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.
Drug couriers have been caught returning from countries such as the US, Canada and Thailand, where cannabis is easier to obtain legally.
Organised 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.
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.
Mr Yates continued: ‘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.
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.