Belgian and Russian tourists were separately arrested at Phuket International Airport last night and today after allegedly attempting to smuggle cannabis out of Thailand, Thai customs officials said.
The first arrest was made on Tuesday night after customs officers at Phuket airport became suspicious of a Belgian woman who had checked in two suitcases for a flight bound for Paris.
They asked her to open the bags for inspection and found 12 vacuum-sealed packs of dried cannabis flowers weighing a total of 28.3kg, along with eight packs of processed cannabis weighing 3.4kg.
Customs officials estimated the cannabis would have had a street value of about 5.38 million baht in Paris.
In a separate incident today, also at Phuket airport, customs officers searched two suitcases belonging to a Russian tourist as he was about to board a flight to Kazakhstan.
The officers found 11.4kg of dried cannabis flowers and 6.2kg of cannabis resin concealed in 47 plastic-wrapped packages hidden inside cookie packages and laundry detergent bags. The drugs would have had an estimated street value of about 9.5 million baht.
Both suspects were later handed over to Phuket police for further investigation.
Meanwhile, Customs Department Director-General Phantong Loykulnanta said that, since October last year, customs officials have seized 37,210kg of cannabis with an estimated value of about 474 million baht.
He said that most of the seized cannabis, 13,906kg, was destined for the United Kingdom.
In 2024, the UK's National Crime Agency formally notified the Thai government that Thailand was becoming a major source of cannabis being smuggled overseas.
The agency said seizures of cannabis arriving from Thailand at UK airports in 2024 had increased tenfold compared with the previous peak recorded in 2022.
Of the 605 suspects arrested in the UK in 2024 for attempting to smuggle cannabis, 460 had travelled from Thailand.
In 2025, 540 suspects were arrested in the UK for attempting to smuggle cannabis into the country, including 460 who had travelled from Thailand.
To help Thailand combat international cannabis smuggling, the British government has supplied the Thai Customs Department with sophisticated cannabis detection equipment for deployment at major international airports.
