SMUGGLING DEVICES

Hokitika Guardian, 25 September 1933, Page 8

SMUGGLING DEVICES

AMAZINC TRAFFIC IN DRUGS CEASELESS WAR ON EVIL LONDON, September 6. Amazing new ramifications of the drug traffic, despite the efforts of the League of Nations to suppress it, are revealed in an article in the Sunday Ohioiricle by Lieutenant-General Sir George MacMunn. For three years the League lias carried on a determined campaign to hunt down the “dope barons,” illicit drug factories and the European ring of smugglers, but although the traffickers have been driven from one country to another their sinister trade goes on. Sir George MacMunn, who knows the East—he was Comma lider-in-Ghief in Mesopotamia and then QuartermasterGeneral in India—tells of the unceasing world.war,Ahat.is being.waged on the traffic and discloses, some of the astounding methods employed by the smugglers. An unsuspecting woman in London buying a newspaper from a newsvendor near. .Victoria Station recently, asked | the man: ‘‘How can. I get to Scotland Yard?”. The vender looked at her, pushed a packet into her hand ana moved-off. j The hurrying crowd disturbed her, [ ar.d the mail was out of sight. Jumping into a bus the woman looked a the packet, opened it, and found a white powder. She took it to a chi mist and told him what had happened. “Why. miss, this is snow—cocaine!” exclaimed the chemist. That- was all. H?d she used unconsciously a passI'Word?" Was the vendor unloading, in view cf danger P Nobody knows, but it was a queer incident of the persistent traffic in drugs that goes on under the keenest police eyes and noses. Sir George MacMunn continues: “As ore method of smuggling passes another is invented. 1 have seen a s x out woman fighting to retain 'an old-fashioned ppir of . corsets that police were removing. The heavy double seems were packed with cocaine! The habitual criminal learns ‘to pouch,’ that is, to make a receptacle in the soft skin of the epiglottis—easy enough if a lead disc be worn suspended ’Tom a tooth " ' Ingenuity it always the. master o.f ordinary prevention and it is jjn.'y ov international agreement, that the n:rso f.-.h be, remove'., factories elionnai-d, the production of hemp, cocaine and

the like controlled. Thirty-one of .the Powers and States represented at Geneva have subscribed to the .Limitation Convention of 1931 for .the control of illicit drug traffic. “The ‘drug barons’ of the underworld are uneasy; they are being moved on ; their complex machinery, conceived in devilment and prosecution 'With ail ingenuity "worthy of ‘ the finest' cause, is running out of gear, making tor i‘self new channels, hut going on !• “Drugs are ; the need of the underworld and many; who should know better are profiting by engagement in this cruel traffic—how, cruel, how intensely evil, the-upper world only stays to think when some wretched society woman is caught in the toils. Drags are required by many of the tired and weary to give them a spurious rest—by many who would while 'away the hours in their specious effects rather than work for healthy fatigue. In the •East, in India above.all, they are in great demand. “Because the League of Nations has taken up the matter seriously, because Egypt is the great alleyway between ’Fast and West and North and South, because Egypt smuggles hashish other folk drink water, the commandant of the Cairo police, Russell Pasha, the anti-drug specialist and enthusiast, was made in 1929 director of the new-ly-formed Central Narcotic Intelligence Bureau, working both under the Egyptian Government and the League of'Nations.

■ ’“For’ three years now the persistent hunting down of ,the ‘drug barons,’ the'' illicit drug ..factories and the whole machinery,-,.,0f consignment and smuggling proceeds apace at his .hands. Directly the Great Powers with efficient police got to work the pressure of production becomes intense in unrestrained countries. “When. France took drastic action |iin 1930 th/e ‘barons’ went to Turkey.. ’ Tlie factories on the Bosphorus were turning out one and a-half tors of i heroin, that most pernicious of all the • opium products, per month. The Gbazi i was appealed to. By December, 1932, sharp Turkish law was passed and (the police got to work.

“Tiie factories moved to Bulgaria. !Thera -fl-t present, despite Bulgaria’s adherence to the convention of 1931, ’they remain in full public swing, for all the world even to photograph. The !Central Bureau has now complete dossiers and portraits of all these drug ‘barons’ and their more important agents, though the latter are kaleidoscopic enough. VTh'e trouble of Egypt herself is largely hashish smuggling, which though perhaps the least harmful of the drugs leads to the craving for heroin. The struggles with smugglers by the Egyptian police are often fierce ord uramatic, for the low-class Arabs employed by the agents are quite prepared to put up a stout fight and are Ave.il armed. “Shipping in Port Said is, or course, ■a constant source from which smuggling takes place. The hollow tubes of brass bedsteads, tho grease boxes on railway axles, camel saddles, the .soles of slices and every- place' likely and unlikely are used—a largish consignment < i hashish 'was found last year in shaven patches under the, fleece on the humps of shaggy camels. “Tbs Egyptian courts gore mete out

(summary ancl heavy punishments to convicted traffickers. In 1932 the ;Smuggler king of Eyypt. and several ' accomplices who had long defied the police got five years each. The leader, Mustapha Naf e , an .Egyptian of good family and Spanish Ex- ; traction, had held various offices of state before taking to crime. To this (new role he brought several languages, and could pose as of almost and Southern European nationality. The total number of convictions during 1932 was considerable. “Russell Pasha left Egypt in April to attend a meeting of the League of. Nations, and will no doubt press those States who lag behind to bring their house into bona fide order. If Bulgaria cannot reform, Turkey can cut off her opium. With the trade on the ,I’iin and the ‘barons’ disconcerted there should be ;no cities of refuge left for them. “The traffic in China will need the League’s close study. Japanese chemists havje transferred themgelv.es to Manchuria and'China, and while since 1917 herion has flowed into China from Europe, restriction in the West now resulted in factories in Shanghai : °nd Tientsin and elsewhere, having Chinese opium a.s the basis. “But wo may be sure that Russell Pasha, whose tentacles of 'information are (everywhere, will have plenty of information and can . further curtail, the traffic of the ‘international drug stars.’ ”