This week, customs agents intercepted three fake Easter rabbits made from a pure block of ecstasy at the Brussels airport cargo terminal.

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The rabbits, which weighed about 1.8 kilos, were destined to be converted into pills. They had been packaged and mailed from Belgium to a buyer in Hong Kong.

“With one kilogram of ecstasy, six thousand pills of this drug are made,” said Florence Angelici, spokesperson of the Federal Public Service of Finance, stressing that customs agents will destroy the rabbits. 

Drug dealers often use the Belgian postal service to transport narcotics as it usually attracts less attention from customs officials in the countries where the drugs are destined. In 2022, Brussels airport agents seized about six tons of narcotics.

Much of the cargo seized corresponded to synthetic drugs manufactured in clandestine laboratories and hidden pharmaceutical plants in Belgium and the Netherlands.

"The drug goes out to everyone. Today, people can order online on the 'deep internet' with a few clicks. They can decide what they want and receive it in their homes,” Angelici lamented.

To counteract drug trafficking, a computerized platform at the Brussels airport selects packages likely to contain narcotics based on known suspicious features, and customs officials get to work scanning and, in some cases, opening them.

Thanks to this system, customs agents recently found ketamine, an anesthetic badly used as a recreational drug, in a Peppa Pig lunch box destined for New Zealand. "The box in which this drug was being carried looked too heavy to be only cardboard and plastic," customs officer Pol Meuleneire stated.