Vietnam cops seize $3m heroin hidden in tea packets
Hanoi, (MILLAT ONLINE):Vietnamese cops have seized $3 million worth of heroin hidden inside packets of tea and smuggled from Laos, state media said Thursday, the largest recorded haul of the drug in the communist country.
Vietnam is a key transit point in the “Golden Triangle” drug trade, a region that cuts across parts of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.
The area is the world’s second largest drug producing region and is awash with methamphetamine, opium and heroin — the refined product of poppies.
A police sting in the mountainous northern Vietnamese province of Dien Bien on Tuesday caught a man aged 44 and a woman in her late 30s, carrying 170 kilogrammes (375 pounds) of heroin on the back of their motorbikes.
The drugs were smuggled over from Laos and packed into scores of packets of Thai branded tea, according to state-run police newspaper Cong An Nhan Dan.
“The operation was very successful, capturing an especially large amount of heroin,” the report quoted Le Cong Binh, deputy head of Dien Bien provincial police.
The heroin was being transported through Vietnam to a third country, he added, without giving details.