HONG KONG
Hong Kong authorities have made a record number of drug busts at its international airport in 2014, as traffickers attempted to smuggle the synthetic "bath salts" drug from China to the United States via the Beijing-controlled territory.
More than HK$30 million ($3.9 million) of the drug was seized this year, the South China Morning Post reported Saturday.
The drug is linked to cases of hyper-aggression and hallucination among users, the report said.
Customs officers at the airport foiled 342 drug-smuggling attempts in the first nine months of the year, a 118 percent rise on the 157 cases in the same period last year, the report said, quoting unnamed sources from the Customs and Excise Department.
In the first nine months of this year, 390 kilograms of illegal drugs were seized, a 58 percent increase on the 247 kilogram seized in the same period last year.
Officers detected 196 drug-smuggling cases at the airport in 2013. There were 204 in 2012 and 140 in 2011.
The report quoted a source as saying this year's rise was due to an increase in the number of attempts to smuggle "bath salts" -- a synthetic form of cathinone, a substance derived from the khat plant which has been chewed as a stimulant in the Middle East for centuries - and the methamphetamine drug known as Ice.
On Thursday, customs officers at the airport foiled an attempt to smuggle nearly HK$21 million of suspected liquid cocaine into Hong Kong.
Officials arrested a female passenger, aged 31, from Lima, Peru, who traveled to the territory from Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
They seized about 20 kilograms of the suspected drug, which was found in 20 bottles of haircare products and three packets of condiments, the Hong Kong government said in a Friday statement.
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