Drug syndicates still winning battle

Press, 11 April 1979, Page 25

Drug syndicates still winning battle

By

COLIN BICKLER,

t, NZPA-Reuter, from Manila

With millions of dollars at their command, the world’s criminal drug syndicates are devising new methods to beat an intensifying crackdown by anti-narcotics agents. After a closed-door conference in Manila last week, agents claim they are slowly making inroads into one of the world’s most lucrative illegal businesses. But they also admit the fight is getting tougher, not easier.

“Every time we uncover one bright method of seizing drugs, they think of three more to beat us,” a top agent of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency says. With heroin now worth about 8300 an ounce wholesale in the United States, the pickings are immense in a multi-billion dollar business that knows no frontiers.

The conference brought together narcotics agents from New Zealand, Asia, Australia, Western Europe, North America, and Interpoll to discuss ways to step up co-operation and beat the “dealers in death.” With co-operation increasing among national enforcement agencies, the syndicates are changing their methods of shipment

and distribution. A courier, carrying heroin, marijuana, or raw opium, might once have taken a plane from Bangkok, Singapore, or Hong Kong direct to a city in North America or eastern Europe. Now, he takes more devious and circuitous routes knowing that arrivals from such areas are prime suspects for customs officers and agents.

For this reason, among others, the agents discussed how to speed up and pass on- information about suspects spotted at various airports, and how to share “watch lists” on people known to make regular unexplained journevs.

As airport searches are increasing, smugglers are using safer methods, taking advantage of the everincreasing sophistication of shipping services. Every day dozens of container ships leave Asian ports with hundreds of containers of heroin, morphine, opium, and marijuana, often tucked away in some small comer. “We are really being pushed on this,” an agent said. “It’s looking for a needle in a haystack.” On any one ship, there

are dozens of huge containers, only one of which may contain a relatively small parcel of highly lucrative drugs. It is a physical impossibility for every single item to be checked in a system designed for transporting goods in the fastest possible way. Without a tip-off from informers or intelligence agencies, the drug is likely to get through.

“We know we are getting beaten on this. There is too much volume, but we have been sharing ideas on how to deal with it, how to find new ways of detecting the presence of drugs,” one agent said.

Sniffer dogs are one answer — but they have a limited use on large ships. A container of furniture, for instance, may have just one desk, or one table, or one chair with a hollowed-out leg packed with narcotics.

Such a shipment was spotted from Colombia — but only because of a tip, and after it had been checked on arrival.

Marijuana sells at $lOOO a kg. in the United

States, one uncovered shipment had 430 kg, so the traffickers have a lot of money to cover their tracks. They also have the cash to make attractive offers to young, carefree tourists travelling around the world. Unknown to police and agents, they may accept $lOOO to carry a small parcel from one point to another. Another increasingly

common method is the mail. Heroin powder can be flattened out inside paper in an envelope. The package is sent to a fictitious name but to a correct address. The receiver leaves the package lying around for a few days to check if it is being watched. If an agent walks in, he would have difficulty proving a connection between the receiver and the package, since it does not have his name on it and has not been opened. If no-one has bothered him after a few days, the recipient is free to pass it through the system on to the street. Agents believe many American, service-

men in Asia have been recruited to post such small packages. Pleasure yachts — not usually heavily searched by customs officers — are also used. The yachts themselves may never go to ports known as drug sources. They make connections somewhere at sea with other vessels. Drugs are known to have arrived from South-East Asia in to New Zealand in this

way. The delegates concluded that if the situation is improving in the United States, it is getting worse in Australia and Western Europe. More resources are needed to match wits with the syndicates. If, as delegates said, Burma and Thailand are beginning to make a serious impact on the trade in opium and heroin from the notorious “Golden Triangle” area they share with Laos, new areas are taking over. Chief among these, according to United States Drug Enforcement Agency administrator, Peter Benzinger, are Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are

supplementing South-East Asian supplies into Western Europe in ever increasing amounts. Farmers in these countries are taking advantage of new irrigation methods to plant opium poppies among other crops. Colombia and Mexico — prime sources of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin for the United States — are stepping up their attacks on the producers and shippers. But the criminal sydicates are finding new sources and methods of getting the drugs into North America. Benzinger remains opti» mistic because, he says co-operation among law enforcement agencies is improving all the time. He cites a recent case in which authorities in Bangkok, Manila, and the west coast of the United States broke up a large syndicate. They put away three men in California and a couple in the Philippines — mainly a transit centre — for long periods. He also points to heavy crackdowns in Mexico and Colombia, which have considerably cut the flow of drugs into the United States. Last year, 1.2 million tons of marijuana were seized in the United

States — three times the 1977 haul.

Purity of heroin reaching the street was down 47 per cent — a sign that supplies were being cut — and prices were increasing all the time. Heroin deaths in the United States dropped from a high of nearly 500 in the second quarter of 1976 to only 86 in the second quarter of last year. Her o i n-related injuries dropped from more than 5000 in the third quarter of 1976 to 2280 in the third quarter of last year. Among methods Ben* zinger recommended to the various countries at the conference were laws that allowed the seizure of assets and property shown to be related to earnings from illicit drug sales. Many drug dealers invest their money in seemingly legitimate firms to cover up their high incomes. “So you have to hit them in the pocket book if you are to break the rackets.”

Conspiracy laws are also being recommended. These allow convictions of top people who can be proved to have association with the rackets while not actually handling the drugs.