Huge amount of methamphetamine seized as Sri Lanka's drug crisis deepens

ANTI-NARCOTICS agents from the US and Sri Lanka have seized almost half a ton of crystal methamphetamine on Wednesday (2), in an operation that has again exposed the scale of the drug crisis affecting Sri Lanka's 22 million people.

Some 463 kilograms (1,020 pounds) of the synthetic drug were found hidden in bath towels inside a shipping container that arrived in Colombo over the weekend, police deputy inspector general Ashoka Dharmasena told reporters on Wednesday. Two Pakistani men and a local man have been arrested.

The US embassy in Colombo said the narcotics, valued at $21 million, were meant to be smuggled onward to international markets via Sri Lanka. The shipment was tracked from Pakistan between August 14 and 29 by the US Drug Enforcement Administration's office and the Sri Lanka Police Narcotics Bureau, working together after a tip-off.

Since October, Sri Lanka's anti-narcotics drive has recovered nearly 14 tonnes of illegal drugsPhoto: US Embassy in Sri Lanka

"This operation underscores the strength of the US–Sri Lanka partnership in dismantling transnational criminal organisations that fund terrorism and threaten communities in both our countries," the embassy said in a statement.

The seizure adds to what officials describe as an escalating problem for the island nation. Since October, Sri Lanka's anti-narcotics drive has recovered nearly 14 tonnes of illegal drugs, including methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine, Dharmasena said.

Public security minister Ananda Wijepala told parliament that most of the drugs entering the country originate in Afghanistan and Pakistan and are smuggled in by sea. He said an estimated 400,000 people in Sri Lanka are drug users — a figure that points to the human cost behind each seizure.

The country's fight against trafficking has led to previous convictions. In October 2024, a Sri Lankan court sentenced 10 Iranian men to life imprisonment after they pleaded guilty to heroin smuggling. Sri Lanka's largest single narcotics seizure remains the 800 kilograms of cocaine found hidden in a timber shipment bound for India in December 2016.