280 kg of cannabis found in Canadian lumber at Osaka port
Osaka Customs found about 280 kg of cannabis hidden in lumber arriving from Canada in August 2007, alongside stimulants and a record haul of MDMA tablets. The combined seizure was valued at about 2.72 billion yen, the largest drug haul in Japanese history at the time.
Osaka Customs officers found about 280 kg of cannabis hidden in a lumber shipment that arrived at Osaka port from Canada in August 2007, in what officials called a record drug seizure.[1][2][3]
The cannabis was concealed in cavities inside the lumber, which arrived as sea container cargo and was picked out during import inspection; officers X-rayed the wood to find the hollowed spaces.[1][3]The US Embassy in Tokyo summarised the case as a joint police and customs seizure of 688,000 MDMA tablets, 155 kg of methamphetamine and 280 kg of marijuana from a vessel originating in Vancouver.[2]
The MDMA portion was a record high for Japan Customs, and the combined haul was valued at about 2.72 billion yen and described as the largest drug seizure in Japanese history, a figure covering all the drugs found rather than the cannabis alone.[1][3]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
The customs annual report dates the interdiction to August 2007; the 1 August day follows the customs reference table of major seizures.
The accounts differ slightly on the other drugs found with the cannabis (150 or 155 kg of stimulants; 680,000 or 688,000 MDMA tablets); this report uses the customs and embassy figures and counts only the cannabis.
No arrests were reported in the opened sources.
No photograph of the seizure with a recoverable direct image address was found in the opened pages.
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