Drug Rugs

Drug traffickers in China's far west are smuggling heroin into the country woven into carpets imported from Afghanistan and Pakistan, giving an entirely new meaning to the term "roll one up and smoke it".

Customs officials in Xinjiang, which borders both countries, have seized more than 30 carpets containing some 110 lbs of heroin in the last several months. Traffickers first inject heroin into plastic tubes of 1-2 mm diameter and wrap them with colorful natural or synthetic fibers to make them look like yarn. They then weave them into the carpet along with normal yarn. The new smuggling method was making detection harder as equipment normally used by customs' officers was not up to the task, the newspaper added.

While drug smuggling into China from the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia -- including Laos, Myanmar and Thailand -- had fallen, drug trafficking was on the rise from the Golden Crescent, which includes Afghanistan and Pakistan. Drugs smuggled into China are in turn sent to other destinations. Heroin and cocaine usually go to Australia and Europe, while new drugs such as Ecstasy are more likely to be smuggled into South Korea and Japan. Rugs, coincidentally, are sold in all these countries.

what the kids call a drug rug: that natty poncho from TJ