Smuggler hid cannabis in lamb pot roast

A drug smuggler attempted to hide 20g of cannabis in a lamb pot roast, police in Australia's Northern Territory say. "A quick X-ray revealed seasoning of a completely illegal nature," a police statement said. The sealed plastic bag of cannabis had been inserted into the lamb which had then been re-wrapped in heat-shrunk plastic, Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Malogorski said.

"In an Indigenous community you're looking at $100 for 1 gram," he said. "You're looking at $2,000." Sergeant Malogorski said the pot roast had been delivered to a company at Darwin Airport as freight consigned for the Tiwi Islands 100 kilometres to the north.



Illegal drugs such as cannabis command exorbitant prices in many Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory and suppliers find "ingenious" ways to smuggle and hide them, he said. Unlawfully supplying cannabis to another in the Northern Territory attracts a maximum five years imprisonment.

"It is a small amount of cannabis," he said. "The problem you have is on Indigenous communities where people haven't got a large amount of money and the dealers are trying to rip the community off. They can't afford to pay that sort of money for that type of rubbish." The lamb roast was destroyed while the cannabis has been sent to the forensics centre for testing, he said.