M Afshar, H Hoseinian Moghadam,
Volume 59, Issue 6 (11-2001)
Abstract
One method of drug smuggling is body packing or body stuffing, placement of narcotics (opium, heroin, hashish, …) inside intestinal tract for transfer from city to city or country to country. Estimating of the methods for transferring, content of packets, packaging, cause of death and results of diagnostic and therapeutic methods can effectively decrease the number of body packer and law execution. This study is case series by randomized sampling. Several parameters such as sex, age, marital status, addiction, job, level of education, type of opioids and their weight and number of packets, result of abdominal X-ray, surgery needs, were collected from April 1999 to December 2000. Through this period of time, 32 male smuggler who had swallowed drug packets were detained. The average age was 41 years (max=62, min=20). The minimum weight of the opium carried by this smugglers was below 20 gram and maximum weight was 1000 grams (median=360 grams). The minimum number of packets were one packet and maximum number of packets were 54 (median=10 packets). In 84 percent of body smugglers the content of packets was opium, 13 percent was heroin and 3 percent was hashish. From the cases, 81 percent of smugglers were addicts themselves. Death occurred in 7 cases from which 3 were after surgery.
