Oh This, This Is My Friend's Bag

Evidently, each year, German officials give a press conference displaying some of the contraband seized by customs police. This year, they reported that German customs seized over five times as many pirated goods in 2006 as they did in 2005. While this Der Spiegel article doesn't mention it, I have to imagine that one of the reasons for this upsurge was last summer's World Cup. My reason for thinking this:

Drug seizures were also on the up last year, with 3.2 metric tons of hashish seized, up from 1.6 tons in 2005. The amount of cocaine found also increased from 896 kilograms in 2005 to 1.5 tons in 2006. Seizures of heroin also were up, increasing from 456 kilograms seized in 2005 to 529 in 2006, but the amount of amphetamines nabbed stayed relatively stable at 263 kilograms seized in 2006, compared to 269 kilograms the previous year.

Twice as much hashish and nearly twice as much cocaine in 2006 as compared to the year before? Sounds like someone was getting ready to have some people over, maybe for a month-long party that got going sometime last June.

Something to Declare [Der Spiegel]

-ac