"Dopey dogs fail skunk sniffing test"

Perhaps one of the most shocking yet most ridiculous blunders to date has been committed by Narita airport police…

Narita airport officials have announced that they carried out a customs training test on passengers on Sunday by secretly placing 142grams of cannabis in an unwitting passenger’s bag, only for the dogs to fail sniffing out the drug and the officer not remembering which passenger and bag he had put it in.

According to the Asahi Shimbun, at approximately 15:00, 142grams of cannabis resin was placed in the side pocket of a black suitcase. The owner of the suitcase is thought to have landed in Narita from Hong Kong on a Cathay Pacific flight number 520 in Terminal 2. The 11cm by 9cm by 3cm resin was placed in a silver box and wrapped in newspaper.

The Narita Airport officials say that although this type of training is against regulations, it has been carried out before, but successfully. They say using the same bag each time means that the “results of the training decreases” and therefore, using a real life passenger works better.

However, the four customs officers and the two dogs made a real hash-up of this one…

The customs officers are now going around the hotels in the hope of finding the passenger and have put out an appeal for the passenger to contact them if they find the package.

Obviously, the international media have picked up on this story and is sure to make it as a classic quirky news piece. The Narita officials are clearly incompetent and we can expect the international community to be laughing at them. However, the person with the last laugh may be the passenger with a wad of cannabis in his bag…unless they happen to not find the package and get caught with it in transit in Bangkok

BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7419969.stm

Asahi Shimbun (Japanese): http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0526/TKY200805260341.html