Every year, airport authorities around the world seize hundreds of thousands of pounds of illegal substances that criminals attempt to smuggle across borders.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has previously released descriptions of incidents in which it found drugs in Everything from the inside of a hair tie to the carcass of a raw chicken, while last week Canadian police found a Breaking Bad-worthy amount of methamphetamine (24.84 kilograms or 11.8 pounds) was found in the suitcase of a traveler heading from Vancouver to Australia.
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Another recent incident occurred at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) when U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized five pounds of a chemical called gamma butyrolactone in the suitcase of a 26-year-old traveler arriving from Spain.
“Two and a half liters of liquid GBL were seized and the individual was arrested”
Gamma butyrolactone, colloquially known as “liquid ecstasy” and “bottle coma,” is a type of chemical compound that causes extreme drowsiness in those who consume it. It is not prescribed as a medicine, but in recent years it has become an illegal street drug due to its extreme potency and highly addictive nature.
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The individual was carrying the substance in liquid form distributed in two bottles with a total of approximately two and a half quarts.
“GHB can be used as a date rape drug by sexual predators and as a growth hormone booster by bodybuilders,” CBP wrote in its summary of the seizure. “Officers seized the two and a half quarts of liquid GBL and arrested the individual, who was then turned over to the Clayton County Police Department for state processing.”
The individual arrested was a U.S. citizen returning from spending time abroad.
CBP also said it seizes an average of 2,895 pounds of dangerous drugs at the nation's airports each day and uses a range of methods from routine screening to dogs trained to track them down from smugglers.
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Below are some of the other items seized by CBP
“Agents used a handheld elemental isotope analysis tool to determine what the clear liquid/substance was and identified it as GBL,” CBP further wrote. “Under the Substances Control Act, GBL is a Schedule 1 chemical and is known to cause symptoms such as drowsiness, drowsiness, memory loss, and confusion, to name a few.”
In addition to drugs, customs authorities are working to catch those smuggling a range of other prohibited items, ranging from plant species that can transmit diseases to luxury items hidden to prevent trafficking.
Last February, a traveler who arrived in Boston on a Delta Air Lines flight… (DAL) On a flight from Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport (CDG), mummified remains of four monkeys were found in the luggage. This type of product is used as food in some parts of Africa (the traveller had stopped over on a previous flight from the Democratic Republic of Congo), but it was quickly seized and destroyed by the CBP.
A few months earlier, CBP also seized 15 pounds of goat organs from two travelers passing through Chicago's O'Hare International Airport (ORD), while another branch of the government agency simultaneously found a giraffe poop box about a traveler at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP).
