Government agents assigned at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport intercepted six packages containing P1.4 million worth of hybrid cannabis smuggled from the United States.
A composite team from the NAIA Inter-Agency Drug Interdiction Task Group and the Bureau of Customs seized the parcels following an operation at the Central Mail Exchange Center (CMEC) along Domestic Road in Pasay City on Wednesday.
The shipments, which came from Anaheim, California, and consigned to various individuals residing in Binan City in Laguna, were misdeclared as t-shirts, sweaters, and windbreakers, a clear case of technical smuggling.
The owners of the parcels, whom the authorities did not identify, will face criminal charges for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 in relation to the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act.
The seized drugs were turned over to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency for proper disposal.
Airport and Customs personnel have been apprehending illegal drug shipments in support of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s anti-drug campaign.
Last month, the same team intercepted 19 smuggled parcels of assorted drugs worth more than P6 million, also at CMEC.
Confiscated were packages containing high-grade marijuana, ecstasy, cannabis oil, and dry opium poppy flowers.
The parcels were misdeclared as basketball and trading cards, gift toys, electrical machines and apparatus, jewelry, nutritional oil, jigsaw puzzles, and boots.
They were sent from Canada and the United States and consigned to residents in the cities of Makati, Pasig, Caloocan, Taguig, Manila, and Quezon City, as well as provinces of Laguna, Bulacan, Bataan, Zambales, and Isabela.
Airport authorities also recently arrested four individuals for attempting to claim a shipment of ecstasy worth P85 million in CMEC.
This shipment from the Netherlands was declared as “dog food” and was consigned to a resident of Cabanatuan City.
