Berlin, July 21st, 2026 (The Berlin Spectator) – Customs officers at Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) seized significantly larger quantities of cannabis, khat and amphetamines last year than in any previous year on record, according to figures first reported by broadcaster RBB. While the number of individual seizures actually fell to 426 in 2025 — down from 471 in 2024 and 731 in 2023 — the amounts involved per seizure rose sharply, even as the number of checks conducted increased substantially. The airport itself also set a record in 2025, handling some 26 million passengers.
In a separate case, customs officers seized 16 kilograms of ketamine at BER in early June of this year. A 22-year-old man was stopped at the gate shortly before boarding a flight to Hong Kong, according to RBB — a find of a scale not previously seen for that particular drug.
Checks Up Nearly A Third, Violations Up A Fifth
According to an evaluation by the Potsdam Main Customs Office obtained by RBB, customs officers inspected more baggage and passengers in 2025 than ever before, and detected more violations in the process — though the hit rate per check declined slightly. In total, officers checked around 662,000 pieces of luggage, passengers and cargo items last year, a 32.6 percent increase over the previous year.
The number of detected violations, however, rose by only about 21 percent, climbing from roughly 7,650 to more than 9,200. As a result, the violation detection rate slipped from 1.57 percent in 2023 to 1.4 percent now. A spokeswoman for the Potsdam Main Customs Office told RBB that a lower number of individual cases does not automatically mean smuggling has declined or that checks have become less effective.
Untaxed Tobacco Still The Most Common Violation
The largest share of detected violations involved untaxed tobacco products, the report found. According to the customs office spokeswoman, tobacco seizures were most frequently linked to flights arriving from Turkey, while gold was more commonly found on flights from Dubai. Among narcotics, the most frequently detected substances between 2023 and 2025 were cannabis, khat — a plant native mainly to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, whose leaves are chewed for an amphetamine-like effect — and amphetamines themselves.
Cannabis, however, dominated the drug statistics by volume. Officers seized around 9.4 kilograms in 2023 and roughly 4 kilograms in 2024, but that figure jumped to nearly 141 kilograms in 2025. The spike was driven largely by a handful of major individual seizures: in April 2025, a customs dog discovered 68 kilograms of cannabis packed in the luggage of two passengers who had flown in from Bangkok via Doha — the largest single cannabis seizure in BER’s history, according to customs officials. Two further large seizures, of 30 and 16 kilograms respectively, added to the total.
Other drugs also produced notable individual hauls last year, including a roughly 5-kilogram heroin seizure and two khat seizures of 20 and 50 kilograms respectively. Detection dogs remain essential to customs operations at BER, where they are trained to detect four categories: tobacco, cash, narcotics, and protected wildlife species.
