The Ministry of Public Security’s Drug Crime Investigation Police Department Deputy Head Nguyen Ngoc Quang told local media on Tuesday that they had found GPS trackers attached to the drug packages that recently drifted onto local beaches.

"More drug packages have been found drifting onto beaches in the central and southern regions since early this year," the official said. "They are mostly cocaine which is not consumed in Southeast Asian countries including Vietnam. Drug traffickers are just using the local sea to send the drug and may then transport it to other countries for sale."

According to the official, they have found GPS tracking chips attached to the one-kilo drug packages.

"The drug traffickers have floated the packages with GPS tracking out to sea for their team in Vietnam to recover them for sale in other countries," the official said. "This hasn’t been seen before."

Quang urged local people to immediately report any drug finds to local authorities.

Police in the southern province of Tien Giang announced on April 1 that they had recently collected 84 packages each containing a kilo of suspected drugs that washed ashore Go Cong Beach. Many of the packages were found on the beach by a scrap collector who informed local police.

In late March, a man in Vung Tau City also found 21 packs each containing a kilo of cocaine on a local beach.

In January, authorities in the central coastal province of Quang Ngai also seized 288 packages of cocaine each weighing a kilo after a local man stumbled across the packages drifting onto a beach in the area. This was the largest amount of drugs found drifting onto local beaches so far. A week earlier, a local man also found three kilos of cocaine on the same beach.

In late 2022, 58 kilos of methamphetamine were also found drifting onto beaches in central provinces from Quang Tri to Binh Thuan.