No camouflage worked. No courier trick slipped through.
At NAIA, drug smugglers just slammed headfirst into a Customs wall that doesn’t blink.

The Bureau of Customs–Ninoy Aquino International Airport (BOC-NAIA) has intercepted over ₱10.6 million worth of marijuana, ripping apart yet another attempt to flood the country with illegal drugs—parcel by parcel, lie by lie.

In a series of tightly coordinated interdictions with the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and the NAIA Inter-Agency Drug Interdiction Task Group (NAIA-IADITG), Customs officers uncovered 20 abandoned inbound parcels stuffed with dried marijuana leaves, locally known as kush. Declared as harmless consumer goods—snacks, clothes, dried fruits, even art supplies—the shipments were anything but innocent.

On January 22, nine parcels yielded a staggering ₱6.6 million worth of kush.
Barely days later, on February 2, another eleven parcels were caught cold—this time packing ₱4.07 million more in illegal drugs.

Same playbook. Same lies. Same ending: seizure and shutdown.

NEPOMUCENO: NO LETUP, NO EXCUSES

Customs Commissioner Ariel F. Nepomuceno was blunt—and unyielding.

This, he said, is exactly what President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. expects: borders that hold and enforcement that bites.

“Sustained vigilance and close coordination with our partner agencies remain our strongest tools,” Nepomuceno stressed. “We will continue to strengthen our controls and act decisively against any attempt to bring illegal drugs into the country.”

Translation: there is no safe entry point, and there will be no second chances.

MAPA’S NAIA: ZERO SPACE FOR DRUGS

At ground zero, BOC-NAIA District Collector Atty. Yasmin O. Mapa is keeping the airport sealed tight.

Under her watch, postal and courier channels—once exploited by traffickers—are now a minefield for smugglers. Every parcel is a potential crime scene. Every suspicious shipment gets pulled, opened, and exposed.

All seized drugs were immediately secured and turned over to PDEA for investigation, with violations clearly falling under Republic Act 9165 and the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act (RA 10863).

₱320 MILLION AND COUNTING

The message gets louder with every bust.

With these latest seizures, BOC-NAIA has now intercepted more than ₱320 million worth of illegal drugs this year alone—a brutal statistic that underscores one reality: Customs is not slowing down.

For smugglers betting on deception, abandonment, or volume—NAIA is closed territory.

For the public, the message is clear:
Customs is watching. Customs is acting. And Customs is winning.

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