Two tourists arrested in Phuket for attempting to smuggle cannabis abroad

Belgian and Russian tourists were separately arrested at Phuket airport last night and today by Thai customs officials as they attempted to smuggle cannabis out of the country.

The first arrest was made on Tuesday night, when customs officers at the Phuket airport became suspicious of a female Belgian tourist after she checked in two suitcases for a flight bound for Paris.

They asked her to open the bags for inspection. They found 12 packs of dried cannabis flowers, packed in air-tight bags, together weighing 28.3kg, and eight packs of processed cannabis, weighing 3.4kg.

Customs officers estimate that the cannabis would have a street value of about 5.38 million baht in Paris.

In a separate incident today, also at Phuket airport, customs officers searched two cases of 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 in 47 packs wrapped in plastic sheets hidden in cookie and laundry fluid bags. The drug would have had a street value of about 9.5 million baht.

Both suspects were later handed over to Phuket police for further questioning.

Meanwhile, Customs Department Director-General Phantong Loykulnanta said that, since October last year, customs haveseized 37,210kg of cannabis, worth about 474 million baht.

He said that most (13,906kg) of seized cannabis was intended for the United Kingdom.

In 2024, the UK’s National Crime Agency formally notified the Thai government that Thailand is becoming a major global cannabis exporter, with statistics showing that seizures of cannabis arriving from Thailand at UK airports in 2024 had increased tenfold since their peak in 2022. Of the 605 suspects arrested, 460 of had arrived from Thailand.

In 2025, 540 suspects were arrested in UK for attempting to smuggle cannabis into UK, including 460 who travelled from Thailand.

To help Thailand counter cannabis smuggling overseas, the British government has already sent sophisticated cannabis detection equipment to the Thai Customs Department for deployment at major international airports.