Hundreds of airline passengers are “brazenly” arriving in the UK with suitcases full of cannabis – without even trying to hide it – according to the National Crime Agency (NCA).

The agency’s director general Graeme Biggar said cannabis remains the “biggest single drug consumed in the UK.”

He said the law enforcement agency had noticed a “significant increase” in the last two years of airline passengers trying to bring both cannabis and cocaine into the country in their luggage.

This year officers have seized “more than double” the amount of cannabis confiscated in 2023 from air passengers as they arrive.

“In terms of overall supply in the UK, that’s not that material. We’ve seized 12,000 kilograms so far this year, and that is really quite a small proportion of the amount of cannabis that’s consumed in this country.”

Biggar explained that the majority of cannabis is still grown in the UK and it is chemically the same composition regardless of where it is cultivated.

However, there is a perception in the drugs market that when obtained from countries where the drug is legal that it is of better quality.

Rob Jones, the NCA’s director general of operations, said: “What really worries us is a normalisation of [cannabis] in bags that have gone through very stringent security controls.”

He described one flight which had a suitcase containing 40 kilograms of cannabis.

In December 2023, the NCA issued a warning to potential drug smugglers after a series of cannabis seizures were made from passengers flying into Birmingham International Airport.

Nine people were arrested at the airport within two weeks, all carrying between 15 and 40 kilograms of the drug in suitcases.