Record number of drug busts at Hong Kong International Airport

A record number of drug busts have been made at the airport this year as traffickers tried to smuggle the synthetic drug "bath salts" from the mainland to the United States via Hong Kong.

The busts involved more than HK$30 million worth of the drug, which has been linked to cases of hyperaggression and hallucination among users.

Customs officers at the airport foiled 342 drug-smuggling attempts in the first nine months of this year, a 118 per cent rise from 157 cases in the same period of last year, sources from the Customs and Excise Department said.

In the first nine months of this year, 390kg of illegal drugs were seized, a 58 per cent increase from the 247kg seized in the same period last year.

Officers detected 196 drug-smuggling cases at the airport in the whole of 2013, with 204 in 2012 and 140 in 2011.

One source attributed this year's rise to the increasing number of attempts to smuggle "bath salts" - a synthetic form of cathinone, a substance derived from the khat plant which has been chewed as a stimulant in the Middle East for centuries - and the methamphetamine drug known as Ice.