The 'Drug Loo'

Fro drug mules smuggling drugs into the US. [Link]

This is the last bathroom in the city anyone would ever want to use - no matter how bad the urge.

It is called the "Drug Loo" - the dreaded destination of drug mules who try to smuggle narcotics through Kennedy Airport by hiding it inside their bodies.

Here, in an ultra-private privy, the deceit of the smuggler who is hardest to catch is finally exposed - although some still refuse to come clean.

After nature calls, this high-tech toilet sanitizes the evidence.

The commode separates the waste from what are called "pellets" or "balloons" - small latex packets of heroin, cocaine or other drugs that mules ingest or insert into their bodies.

"It is very much an automated system," Brian Humphrey, Kennedy Airport Port director for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said of the drug loo.

And that's a big relief to federal agents. Before the loo was first flushed last October, evidence recovery was a disgusting ordeal that involved officers sifting through used bed pans.

The loo is housed in a medical facility near the airport. It was built specifically for handling the suspects that agents call "internal couriers" or "swallowers."

The need for such a facility was great: At Kennedy Airport, more internal couriers are sent to the drug loo than at all of the U.S. ports monitored by Customs combined, Humphrey said.