This is a complete shift from the earlier statement issued by the Customs after the arrests last Monday.
'Cocaine' busted in the Volta Region turns into ephedrine
A 12 kilograms of cocaine reportedly busted by the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority has been confirmed to be ephrine.
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Mr Johnson Menlah Yankey, the Chief Revenue Officer (Communications and Public Affairs) at the Customs Division, had said preliminary tests have revealed that the substance is cocaine.
However, the Head of the Enforcement Unit at NACOB, Mr Solomon Stanley Eyo, told the Daily Graphic in Accra on Wednesday, October 2, that as the state institution clothed with the law to conduct tests on suspected narcotic drugs, NACOB took centre stage in the investigations and found out that the substance was ephedrine.
Explaining what might have led the Customs officials to suspect that the substance was cocaine, he said: “It [substance] is whitish and powdery and I think that's where the problem comes from; it's not every white thing that is cocaine.”
Mr Eyo said information available to his office, in addition to intelligence from the Drug Law Enforcement Agency (DLEA) of Nigeria, pointed to the suspicion that the seized ephedrine was to be used in the preparation of methamphetamine, which has become a lucrative trade, far greater than the trade in cocaine.
“Our intelligence has been that people are using ephedrine to prepare methamphetamine, which is a recreational drug used to get high. Most often, the methamphetamine is transported to South Africa for onward trafficking to the Far East, where the market is very high,” he said.
“One kilogramme of methamphetamine in the Far East is about $120,000, which is higher than one kilogramme of cocaine, which is $40,000,” he added.
Ephedrine is an odourless, white, powdered substance used in the preparation of legal drugs and also methamphetamine, a strong and highly addictive drug that affects the central nervous system and which has no legal use.
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