Bhutan customs seize over 7 kg of dried cannabis at Paro airport
Bhutanese customs officers at Paro International Airport seized more than 7 kg of dried cannabis in the first five months of 2025, while intercepting three separate heroin smuggling attempts on the same Bangkok route. The seizures came during a record wave of brown sugar trafficking that the Royal Bhutan Police said was driven by couriers using Bhutan as a transit route to India.
The customs service also seized more than 7 kg of dried cannabis.[1]
By May 26, 2025, the Royal Bhutan Police recorded 21 drug busts with 32 arrests,
up from 10 cases and 15 arrests in all of 2024.[1]
The three heroin interceptions at Paro International Airport came in the same
wave of seizures reported for the first five months of 2025.[1]Police said
the surge in brown sugar trafficking was part of a wider drug crisis, with most
of those arrested for drug offences between 2023 and 2024 aged under 24.[1]
The National Council’s Social and Cultural Affairs Committee listed marijuana
among the substances most commonly abused by young Bhutanese in a recent report.[1]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
The article gives no date for the customs seizures; 26 May 2025, the end of the period it reports on, is used as the incident date.
The cannabis weight is stated only as more than 7 kg, without a precise figure.
The article does not say where the dried cannabis was seized, which route it arrived on, or whether anyone was arrested over it; Paro airport is used because both that and the national drug figures in the article are customs and police results.
The 21 drug busts and 32 arrests for 2025 are not broken down by substance, so they are not recorded as cannabis arrests.
No figure is given for the value of the dried cannabis.
Only one article, the Asia News Network copy of a Kuensel report, could be opened for this event.
Customs officers found 22.34 kilograms of cannabis in abandoned cabin bags on a Drukair flight from Bangkok at Paro airport. A Drukair employee travelling as a passenger was arrested on 14 September 2026 and denied that the bags were his.
Bhutan's Royal Bhutan Police reported seizing 47,427.89 grams of cannabis and 505.34 grams of hashish between January and June 2026, against 2,371.82 grams and 223 grams in the same months of 2025. Cannabis trafficking cases rose from three to 13 and arrests for that offence from five to 26, even as total drug cases and arrests fell.
Police arrested three people after finding 28.51 kg of cannabis in two parcels: 12.91 kg in bean cans at Bhutan Post and 15.6 kg in an air compressor. Further Bangkok consignments brought the total to more than 33 kg by early March, with four Bhutanese and two Indian nationals arrested. The case was an enforcement event, not a change in the law.
In August 2025 the Paro District Court sentenced a 33-year-old Indian national to six years for bringing more than 7 kg of cannabis through Paro airport from Bangkok. In October it sentenced three Indian nationals to between five years and five years and six months for a separate haul of more than 7 kg on the same route.