Guns a growing factor in narcotics enforcement

Some methods of concealment

1 Hiding drugs in machines

Police in Baiyun district, Guangzhou, Guangdong province, cracked a cross-border drug trafficking gang that hid 282 kg of drugs in an air compressor and a steel wire drawing machine and caught four members of the gang. Police said that the machines looked OK to the eye but under optical scanning the drugs could be seen clearly.

2 Hiding drugs in thick broad-bean sauce

Police in Shenyang, Liaoning province, cracked an interprovincial methamphetamine trafficking case when they found that 16.5 kg of methamphetamine had been sealed in 23 small packages and hidden in thick broadbean sauce, which was sent from Guangzhou, Guangdong province, to Shenyang by a logistics company.

3 Hiding drugs inside your body

On May 28, Guangzhou customs found an African man hiding drugs in his body. The Ugandan confessed that he swallowed 23 compressed pills wrapped with high density material before he got on the flight. He said that he could earn $4,000 by smuggling. In the 11 days before and after he was seized, another eight African men who hid drugs in their bodies were also held by customs. The suspects hid a total of 3.9 kg of heroin and 4.3 kg of cocaine in their bodies.

4 Hiding drugs in wine bottles

On Nov 30, customs staff at Shanghai Pudong Airport checked five pieces of luggage carried by two Chinese passengers and found by X-ray that two of the pieces contained 32 bottles of wine. When customs inspected the wine they found 28.2 kg of cocaine hidden inside. The two passengers were a couple and did business in Brazil. They said a Chinese man asked them to bring the wine to China and paid 3,200 yuan ($486) as a service charge. The couple were detained for further investigation.

- Ma Lie