Customs officers in Sri Lanka scored the island nation's biggest weed bust of all time on Sunday, finding 242 pounds of potent Kush cannabis in the luggage of a group returning from a four-day vacation in Thailand. The suspects? 22 Buddhist monks. The distribution of the drugs suggests a coordinated effort: "Each carried about five kilos of the narcotic concealed within false walls in their luggage," a spokesman told media. The monks were taken into custody in Negombo, according to police.
The monks were mostly young students from temples across Sri Lanka and had been on a holiday sponsored by a businessman. Customs officials said it was the largest single detection of Kush at the South Asian country's main international airport. … The latest arrests aren't the first time monks have run afoul of drug laws. In 2022, every single monk at a Buddhist temple in central Thailand was defrocked after they tested positive for methamphetamine. The monks were sent to a health clinic to undergo drug rehabilitation. In 2017, police said a Buddhist monk was arrested in Myanmar after authorities found more than 4 million meth pills in his car and in his monastery.
Buddhism's Fifth Precept supposedly forbids intoxicants, but as with monks in the west there's a fine eastern tradition of making the most of nature's bounty; Japan's Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist tradition relaxed the intoxicant precept centuries ago ("Indeed one ought not to drink, but [you know] it is the way of the world.") But Sri Lanka seems to have the best scandals—including false positives.
Previously:
• Rats ate 400+ pounds of cannabis seized as police evidence
• Japanese rapper Kan a.k.a. GAMI busted for 0.5 grams of weed
• The teenage Roman emperor who scandalized an empire and died at 18
