The Express Delivery Customs Sub-department of Ho Chi Minh City has detected about 1.5 kg of drug precursors mixed into honey that would have been shipped to Australia.

>> Vietnam customs officials detect 1.5kg of drug precursors camouflaged as spicy salt >> Over 4 kg of heroin disguised as medicated oil seized>> Drug precursor found hidden in shampoo, hair dye The agency said on Thursday that the drug precursors were mixed into honey contained in three jars, weighing 2.6 kg in total, which were meant to be sent to Australia by a person from the city’s District 8 on September 22.

On that day, after finding suspicion signs in the three jars with labels showing they contained “saffron honey,” customs officers performed tests on the substance from all the three jars and found that they reacted positively with the reagent.     They then sent samples to the Criminal Science Sub-Institute in HCMC for further testing. The results showed that the samples contained pseudoephedrine and ephedrine, two types of drug precursors. The customs agency estimated that the total weight of the two substances in the jars amounted to 1.5 kg. This is the most recent in a string of similar cases uncovered by the Sub-department since last November, in which drugs or drug precursors were all intended for Australia. On April 1, customs officers found 1.5 kg of Pseudoephedrine disguised as salt with chili and lemongrass stored in a jar.

The jar was being shipped along with a bag of prawn crackers and a packet of dried shrimp, which all weighed 3.7 kg.  The package was declared as a gift sent by a person in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho to a recipient in Sydney, Australia. On February 12, the agency discovered over 4 kg of heroin secreted in 40 tubes of ‘medicated oil’ en route to Australia.

The total weight of the drugs was 4.22 kg, an amount valued at about VND15 billion (US$707,500).

On December 8 last year, customs officers at the sub-department found a drug precursor in several bottles of shampoo and hair dye, posted by air to Australia by a person in the southern province of Kien Giang.

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