LaCrossTribune
By ANNE JUNGEN | [email protected] |
Saturday, March 13, 2010
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol intercepted the Holmen-bound package as it entered the country from Austria, said
La Crosse County sheriff's Sgt. John Zimmerman.
On Thursday, investigators discovered 64 bundles of khat worth an estimated $8,000 inside a cardboard box, he said.
Authorities allowed the package to be delivered to a Holmen house, though the recipient was not arrested.
The man planned to deliver the box to a Somali drug dealer in Minneapolis, Zimmerman said.
"He had no idea what he was transporting," he said.
Khat is a flowering shrub native to East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Chewing its leaves and tops produces euphoria and stimulation, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Its leaves also contain cathinone, a schedule I drug in the U.S.
Khat first surfaced in La Crosse County in 2000 when a 60-pound box of the drug was confiscated at the La Crosse Municipal Airport. Two people who planned to pick up the package and deliver it to a Somali community in Minneapolis later were sentenced to 18 months of probation and fined $908.
A man was sentenced to one year of probation in 2003 after he claimed a Federal Express package containing khat.