Drug dogs uncover rising hashish and Subutex finds

Drug dogs from Finland’s five law enforcement agencies are competing in Kuopio, as Customs dogs have already found about 160 kilograms of hashish and 30,000 Subutex tablets this year, Yle reports. The amounts are several times higher than in the previous two years.

The competition for the Finnish championship brings together dogs and handlers from Customs, the police, the Border Guard, the Finnish Defence Forces and the Prison and Probation Service. During a public event on Wednesday, teams searched a car, a horse trailer and a van. Handlers had to interpret their dogs’ signals.

Customs has 35 drug detection dogs, which carry out about 30,000 inspections a year. Nearly a third of the agency’s seized drug consignments are found with the help of dogs.

The Prison and Probation Service has more than 20 dogs. In Kuopio Prison, five-year-old Labrador Ukko and handler Anna-Reetta Seppä search cells and outdoor spaces, as well as visitors, incoming prisoners and mail. They find prohibited substances roughly every other week, usually in small amounts. Subutex tablets are currently the most common find.

Across Finland’s prisons, authorities had found 185 Subutex tablets by the end of June, almost as many as during all of last year. The situation is similar at Mikkeli Prison, where handler Mari Törönen says discoveries fluctuate, with periods of several finds followed by quieter stretches.

Handlers train dogs to detect new drugs as they appear. One is alpha-PVP, known as “peukku” in Finnish. Prisons found 149 grams of the drug last year, while police have found 24 kilograms this year.

The reigning champion, police dog Kamu, competed in Kuopio for the last time. The nine-and-a-half-year-old is due to retire in November.