Cannabis Worth $7m Found Inside Cambodian Coffee

The Cambodian police showed off their latest haul earlier this week as they paraded around 1.5 tonnes of marijuana that had an estimated street value of nearly $7m.

Rightly pleased with themselves, this was another victory for the police force who are currently ploughing resources into an ongoing operation to crackdown and eradicate the drugs trade in the country.

General Khieu Samon, the head of the interior ministry’s anti-drug office, said that the haul had been seized in Cambodia’s capital city Phnom Penh and that a number of Cambodian nations had been arrested.

“They,” said Khieu Samon said, speaking to the press, “planned to smuggle the marijuana to [other] countries where the price is high. The seized marijuana is worth more than $7 million in Western markets.”

Okay, we’ll take a pause for the second and answer that burning question you’ve been dying to ask us. ‘What has this got to do with coffee?’

Well, the answer is in how they were planning to move the drugs around before being packed off and shipped to Europe and America.

“The marijuana was packed into bags of Dao coffee,” Khieu Samon continued, “which was smuggled from neighbouring Laos and into Cambodia.”

Dao is a well-known and popular coffee brand that has its roots in south-east Asia.

This isn’t the first time that a drug smuggling ring in has attempted to use coffee as a cover for their illegal operations. Earlier this year, three men were arrested in Malaysia for using instant coffee sachets to transport a mixture of ecstasy and ketamine around the country.

Maybe this Cambodian group had thought it was a good idea?

Another recent example was when a shipment of cocaine arrived at a German roaster, bundled in with their regular delivery of fresh coffee beans.