British authorities on Friday said they had found more than 12,500 pounds of cocaine hidden in a shipment of bananas, shattering the record for the biggest single seizure of hard drugs in the country.
The National Crime Agency said 5.7 tons of cocaine were found in a container of bananas at the port of Southampton on England’s south coast on Feb. 8. The haul of drugs had an estimated street value of $568 million, the agency said.
Before the massive bust, the previous largest seizures of drugs in the U.K. was a 3.7-ton haul of cocaine found in Southampton two years ago, and before that, 3.2 tons discovered on a tug boat in Scotland in 2015, the agency said.
The packages of cocaine found this month were concealed in a cargo of bananas which had been transported from South America, and officials believe the drugs were headed to Hamburg, Germany, “for onward delivery.”
if one shipment has 6 tons of coke in it the manufacturing and smuggling apparatus has to be huge. that’s half a billion dollars on one roll of the dice. how many multi-ton shipments got through? at what point do we admit that drug prohibition has never prevented anyone who wanted drugs from getting them and just give up?
It’s one shipment of bananas, Michael. How much could it cost, $568M dollars?
Here’s a crazy idea, but hear me out: what if the government produced the cocaine and taxed it, taking billions of dollars away from criminals and creating millions in new tax revenue. People are gonna do coke no matter who makes it.
Yeah but that would hurt the cartels
I need to take more time when buying bananas at Costco
I manage a produce department for a living and I’m biding my time.
That shit is bananas.
B-A-N-A-N-A-S!
C-O-C-A-I-N-E!
I always imagine Kelly
Cocaine for scale.
There’s always money in the banana stand
When I hear reports of “estimated street value” I imagine the police department putting the drugs up for sale on Craigslist and waits for offers. “£500M OBO”.
I bet those bananas cost more than $10 each.
There’s money in the banana stand…chic chic
The first part has 12,500 pounds of cocaine and the next paragraphs gives the amounts of earlier seizures in tons. How does one compare? Lazy writing.
Divide by 2,000?
The second paragraph states it’s 5.7tons.
