Let me ask you something.
If I told you that a drug made from human bones is circulating in West Africa, killing a dozen people a week, and somehow a 21-year-old ex-flight attendant from London is now stuck in a Sri Lankan prison because of it, would you believe me?
Because this actually happened.
Charlotte May Lee, from South London, was arrested earlier this month at Bandaranaike Airport in Colombo after customs officers allegedly found over 100 pounds of a synthetic drug called kush in her luggage.
Not your average street drug—this one reportedly includes tranquilizers, mystery chemicals, and, yes, powdered human remains. The estimated street value?
A cool $3.3 million.
It’s Sri Lanka’s biggest kush seizure ever, and they’re making sure the world knows it.
This kush nightmare has already wreaked havoc in Sierra Leone, where it’s blamed for killing young people weekly.
So dangerous and twisted is the supply chain that graveyards in the region have tightened security to prevent people from digging up skeletons to make more of the stuff. Sierra Leone’s president even called it an “existential crisis.”
Charlotte says she had no idea what she was carrying. Her lawyer told the BBC she’d been living in Thailand, waiting on a visa renewal, and flew to Sri Lanka for a quick stopover.
According to Charlotte, she packed her bags at her hotel and left for the airport without re-checking them. From prison, she told the Daily Mail,
“I had never seen them [the drugs] before. I didn’t expect it at all when they pulled me over at the airport. I thought it was going to be filled with all my stuff.”
She added in her police statement, “They must have planted it then. I know who did it.”
But when asked to name names, she stayed quiet.
Now she’s being held in a prison north of Colombo where the conditions are, well, as grim as you’d expect. Concrete floors, limited contact, and the kind of place that makes you question every choice you ever made.
Charlotte isn’t the only young Brit to be arrested after leaving Bangkok recently. Just two days earlier, Bella Culley, 18, was arrested in Georgia with more than 30 pounds of weed and hashish in her bags.
Authorities in multiple countries are connecting the dots and profiling passengers coming out of Bangkok. “This has been a real nuisance,” said one Sri Lankan customs official, which might be the understatement of the year.
Online, reactions range from “Are you kidding me?” to “This sounds like something from a horror movie.”
People are torn—some think Charlotte is clearly lying, others believe she’s another clueless backpacker used by a smuggling ring.
That’s the uncomfortable part. She might be innocent, or she might just be in way over her head.
So…what does all this mean to us, the people just trying to live a semi-sane life in this mad world?
It means the global drug trade is not just about cocaine and heroin anymore. It’s evolving in ways that feel almost supernatural.
While one side sees survival and profit, the rest of us see it for what it is. Grave-robbing lunacy that makes no moral, logical, or even cinematic sense.
Governments need to collaborate more, sure. But young travelers need better warnings, too. Maybe an airport ad campaign that says: “If someone asks you to carry a bag, just say no. Seriously.”
Well, I write daily (mostly the weird stuff I find interesting). If you like this whole no-nonsense approach, feel free to bookmark and come back tomorrow, or continue reading other stories to make up your mind.
See ya, internet friend.
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