
More than 900 pounds of marijuana vacuum-sealed into plastic bags was seized from a truck trying to cross into the United States via the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021.
The shipment was listed as "phone accessories."
But when U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers examined the pallets inside a tractor-trailer stopped Wednesday at the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge they found 840 vacuum-sealed packages of marijuana, customs officials announced in a statement.
The seized weed weighed nearly a half ton – 936 pounds – and has an estimated street value of $1.9 million.
No arrests were announced in connection with the seizure.
The CBP's Buffalo Field Office, which covers 16 ports of entry into the United States, seized 42,015 pounds of narcotics during their last fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. That represented an increase of 968% from the prior fiscal year. Most of that was marijuana, which has been legalized nationwide in Canada and in some states in the United States but remains illegal to transport over the border.
Last year, officers intercepted large amounts of marijuana at the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge. In August, they found a little over 1,600 pounds in one truck. A couple of weeks later, they stopped a truck with nearly 3,500 pounds of marijuana. In that last case, the drugs were marked as "zinc oxide."
Maki Becker