Note: It was suggested to me that this subreddit might be a good place to ask this question. I apologise in advance if that turns out to be wrong and I should have gone elsewhere instead.
I started wondering about it after reading in the comments of this Reddit thread how during this time of year, the postal service is so overwhelmed with processing and shipping millions of packages that its employees typically don't have the time to be careful with packages, because they are under enormous pressure to meet deadlines. Could it be that Customs find themselves in a similar situation during this time of year? Surely there must be a great number of people who are sending holiday presents to their relatives living abroad - all of which have to go through Customs - and perhaps the extra work that comes with this is such that Customs employees are more likely to miss packages that contain pharmaceutical drugs?
At the same time, the opposite could be true, though: it is possible that Customs have already anticipated this sort of reasoning from those wishing to buy or ship such items, causing them to temporarily hire extra people for detecting packages with potentially illegal content. As a result, it could be that the chances of such packages being intercepted are as high as they are at any other time of year (or perhaps even a bit higher than usual).
I don't know, it seems difficult to get an adequate impression of this for a layperson such as myself.
So, in a nutshell: is there even such a thing as a safest time of year to order a pharmaceutical drug and have it shipped to you? If so, I have to say that I also wonder what the least safest time must be. I'm personally inclined to think it must be the summer months, as that is when loads of people go on holiday in my part of Europe and so the part of Customs that deals with mailed packages probably has less work to do and therefore more time to catch packages that contain potentially illegal content. I could easily be wrong about that, however.
Thank you in advance for any insights that you are able to share about this matter.
Note: I am not currently in a position to buy pharmaceutical drugs. I just created this thread because I found myself curious about this particular topic.
customs can hire extra people, but, there is only so many x-rays machines.