Four years for smuggling 4 kg of cannabis buried in four cities
A Shanghai court sentenced a man named Xu to four years in prison and a 10,000-yuan fine on 30 March 2026 for smuggling and transporting more than four kilograms of cannabis from Southeast Asia in three trips in 2025 and burying it in four cities. No cannabis was recovered; prosecutors built the case from bank flows, travel records and recovered phone data, and he confessed.
Xu joined a cross-border drug gang in late 2024 and took instructions through an overseas chat
app.[1][2]He flew three times to a Southeast Asian country — in January, February and April 2025
— carrying packages of cannabis into China, and buried the goods in batches in Changsha,
Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai, earning 30,000 yuan a trip.[1][2]
Police identified him in July 2025 while working on a separate drug-selling case and arrested him
in September 2025.[1][2]No cannabis or burial tools were recovered and he had deleted his chat
records, but prosecutors traced his bank flows, flight and car-hire records and his online orders
for a shovel and waterproof tape, and technical investigators recovered deleted phone data.[2]He finally admitted three smuggling trips totalling more than four kilograms, five cross-province
transfers and burials at nearly 100 sites, returned 25,000 yuan of his earnings and gave
information on the gang.[1][2]
The Jing’an District Procuratorate indicted him on 18 March 2026, and the Jing’an court sentenced
him to four years in prison and a 10,000-yuan fine on 30 March for smuggling and transporting
drugs; the judgment has taken effect.[1][2]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
The man's full name was not released; he appears in the procuratorate's anonymised form, Xu.
More than three kilograms was established at his arrest and more than four kilograms in his final confession; the report uses the confessed total for the three trips.
No cannabis or burial tools were recovered, so the sentence rests on circumstantial evidence rather than on seized drugs.
The second account is a reprint of the same 正义网 article on another procuratorate's site, not independent reporting.
The reports do not say what happened to the overseas organisers; police opened more than ten further leads and took coercive measures against three more suspects.
Qujing court sentenced two men for picking and drying wild cannabis leaves, using some themselves and selling some to another person. One received a one-year prison term and the other nine months.
Beijing No. 4 Intermediate People's Court sentenced a man named Wang to six months in prison and a 5,000-yuan fine on 26 June 2026 for smuggling cannabis e-cigarettes posted to him from abroad and concealed in supplement bottles. Police seized 16 e-cigarettes holding 6.92 grams of THC paste; the court treated it as a small quantity and gave him leniency for his confession.
Two foreign transit passengers were sentenced to eight and four years after Customs seized 70.8309 kg of cannabis from four checked bags at Beijing Capital International Airport in June 2025. They had planned to carry it through Beijing to a third country.
Charged 2Cannabis 70.8309 kgPrison 8 years and 4 years
A Lixin County court sentenced Huang to four years and six months in prison and a 400,000-yuan fine on 10 September 2025 for growing cannabis in Anhui and selling it online to buyers in Qingdao and Weihai. He and an accomplice harvested about 3.4 kilograms in 2023 and sold about 1.2 kilograms for 110,000 yuan in virtual currency; the case was later published as a national typical case.
