Vietnam arrests Lao drug smuggler

HANOI, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's border guards have recently detained a 62-year-old Lao man for smuggling and transporting 40 kg of methamphetamine, 120,000 pills of lab-made drugs and two cakes of heroin totaling some 885,000 U.S. dollars.

The man was detained at a Vietnam-Laos border area late last week, when he was preparing to transfer the drugs to a Vietnamese drug dealer, according to border guards of Vietnam's northern Son La province on Monday.

Increasingly bigger amounts of methamphetamine are being smuggled into Vietnam, because such kind of drug is being made in bigger volumes in the Golden Triangle at the borders of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar at lower prices, according to local border guards and police forces.

Selling prices of methamphetamine at the Golden Triangle currently stand at 200-250 million Vietnamese dong (8,800-11,000 U.S. dollars) per kilogram, posting a three-fold decrease against some years ago.

According to Vietnamese law, those convicted of smuggling over 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kg of methamphetamine are punishable by death. Making or trading 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal drugs also faces death penalty. Enditem