The Lure of Opium: An Insidious Traffic

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 738, 10 August 1929, Page 22

The Lure of Opium: An Insidious Traffic

Ever-Vigilant Officials Have to Search in Strange Places for Contraband . • . Giant Organisation for Distribution of Drags . . (WRITTEN for THE SUN 6 y LEONARD J. CRONIN)

HAT is th© price of a bottle of whisky to a man, thirsting for whisky on a Sunday morning? That depends

chiefly upon the intensity of the thirst and upon the temperament of the seller. So it is with opium, cocaine and other potent drugs which are smuggled into New Zealand beneath the very noses of the Customs officials by people on ships coming across from Australia and down from the East. Even the poorest Chinese will not hesitate to pay a big price for good opium if the demand is great and the supply is small. Vet there is so much risk attached to operating in this illicit traffic so far as New Zealand is concerned that anyone who gets past the official ship rumnjagers considers himself quite entitled—almost legally entitled—to charge a high figure for his wares. In this trade, perhaps more than in any other, the Oriental conscience exhibits gymnastic elasticity, and even approved clients are never certain of the figure they will be compelled to pay for their next supply for the dream-pipe. In China, where a powerful syndicate handles most of the opium distributed to these parts, a half-pound tin is worth somewhere about £1 10s. In New Zealand It will sell, according to the amount available, at anything round about £ls or £2O. At times profiteering importers here have collected £25 or more for a halfpound tin. In Australia this tin would cost something like £lO, the difference in price resulting from the greater danger of discovery if the f goods are to be transhipped at Sydney for New Zealand ports. How are these goods discovered? Well—leave that to the ship searchers—or rummagers, as they are called in big overseas ports. Just leave a tew pounds of opium stowed beneath the hoards in your cabin wardrobe, or slip a few half-pound tins of the drug under the canvas of the life-boat in the hope of getting it ashore when the ship berths. Then call for it after the rummagers have been over the vessel. Tho ship .rummagers are as thorough in their job as a hungry dog is with a meaty bone. No accessible rart of the ship is left untouched, and even the personal effects of members of the crew are liable to search if there is reason for suspicion. In Sydney, on the waterfront, a heavy trade is sometimes done in smuggled opium. Only a few weeks ago a Chinese was caught on board an overseas vessel, and when he could no longer deny the ownership of £6OO worth of opium, declared the drug was for someone in New Zealand.

where these facilities are comparatively few. The Customs authorities have their own fast launches, and an emergency squad of rummagers is always at call. Dressed like firemen in full-length overalls, and equipped with miners’ caps, powerful electric lights and gasmasks, they go below the danger line in oil tankers, searching for drug which is sometimes stowed away between the bottom of the tank and the floor of the ship. The ship’s crew, even to the cook, is lined up on deck and kept there while the searchers go through the bowels of the vessel, looking into the shaft tunnel, up into the fore-peak, telling up boards here and there which show signs of being lately removed, and in fact looking into every nook and cranny which might provide a hiding place for contraband goods. They have with them the plans and specifications of the vessel, even to j the most minute detail, and if a plank j is out of place, the tell-tale blue print

Searchin.’ is conducted in Sydney with dispatch and without warning to those on board. Sydney Havbour is so extensive, and the North Shore possesses so many inlets and bays that'the chance of landing illicit goods are greater than in New Zealand ports,

is a handy instrument in the ensuing investigation. When they finally release the crew and descend over the side, they know exactly what portions of the ship have and have not been visited.

New Zealand ship searchers are similarly thorough. Rummagers at the main ports frequently examine carefully vessels which come from Australia and through the Pacific Islands for any sign of opium, cocaine and other goods which are known to be coming into the country in varying quantities. Chance sometimes helps tlte authorities. A year or two ago a vessel was on her way from the East Coast of America to Fremantle, Australia, and when off the coast of New Zealand the coal supply ran out. Auckland was the nearest port, and the vessel limped into the Waitematn Harbour with bunkers completely empty.

This rare opportunity of getting a ship with bunkers quite empty was too great a temptation for the Customs officials. And a ship from the East, too! So the gang of rummagers became busy, and below one of the planks under the coal bunkers they found 700 tins —over one and a-half cwt. —of opium, belonging, it was discovered, to some of the Chinese firemen on the boat. This was one of the greatest hauls of illicit goods ever made by Customs officials on the New Zealand coast.

But had misfortune not driven the vessel into port the goods probably never would have been discovered. For it is too much, after all, to expect the Customs boarding officers to shift tons upon tons of coal in the slender hope of seeing a few tins of opium at the bottom of the heap—and that to the accompaniment of the amused smiles of Chinese coolies!

Until comparatively recently, opium was sold openly in licensed shops in some parts of the East Indies. It was retailed in small tubes like a miniature tooth-paste tube, about one and a-half inches in length, the thickness of a lead-pencil, and eyeletted so no deception could be practised by the middleman. On one ship entering a New Zealand port a man was discovered with a substantial girdle composed of scores of these tubes threaded upon a strong cord. SUSPICIOUS SIGNS But the difficulties of the authorities do not always end when once the drug is discovered. Unless the ownership can be proved no man on board is likely to volunteer information, and circumstantial evidence has t» be relied upon to some extent. For example, a ship which came to New Zealand only a few months ago was searched; and beneath the boot locker in a first-class cabin wardrobe was found a large quantity of opium. The passenger, who was a reputable business man and entirely above bus picion, had gone ashore. The owner was never discovered, but the profits upon that particular consignment vanished as soon as the eye of the Customs man noticed the suspicious board in the floor of the wardrobe. Only occasionally, in fact, can the owner of opium be traced. Has anyone ever wondered what happens to all these confiscated drugs and contraband goods? During the war, when it was considered a social crime to waste anything of a valuable nature, opium and cocaine so obtained were used by the Defence Department for veterinary purposes, but in times of peace, when

the call for the drug is not so great, the Customs Department has its disposal in hand, either through the destructor or in some other high powered furnace. Every year in Sydney several thousand pounds worth of the drug is solemnly burnt in the Customs launch under the strict supervision of an official specially deputed for the work. Even when opium reaches the shore —and that feat is not accomplished until the Customs shore “watcher” is passed without search—its circulation as an interchangeable commodity does not cease. Although it is brought into the country in half-pound tins, it is divided into minute quantities before being retailed to indiscriminate opium smokers behind the closed doors of quaint houses in the darker alleyways of New Zealand cities. Three, four and five shillings for a pipeful is not out of the way. And what matter, in any case? There is no Opium Profiteering Prevention League operating and even those who peddle opium on the streets of Sydney and in the lower class restaurants and cabarets there alter the price to suit the requirements of the market at the moment. Chinese Subtlety The opium trade is allegedly controlled by a powerful syndicate in China, which acts in these countries through commissioned agents, who, incidentally, collect their share of the profit only if they succeed in getting through the authorities with their valuable charge. So well organised is the syndicate, so its agents claim, that its executive heads are informed accurately as to what happens to every ounce of the drug sent out. After it is brought ashore and distributed here, opium is difficult to discover. Unostentatious houses in the Chinese quarters have been found, upon police investigation. to be opium smoking dens, but unless there is strong evidence to support it, the police will not break down the closely shuttered windows and doors to effect an entrance. A police raid in Haining Street, Wellington, is exciting, to say the least of it. As soon as the uniformed policemen enter one end of the narrow lane, with its narrow, broken footpaths and lines of dark, dingy houses, a warning cry is issued to those who are in charge of pakapoo houses and places where opium is smoked. When the police stop at a particular house there is the noise of panic within. Shrill Oriental squeals rend the evening air—for raids are usually conducted in the dark —and the heavy hand of officialdom is heard hammering at the locked doors demanding entrance.

It sometimes happens that when the raiders finally reach their objective they find a room filled with smoke—clearly from opium pipes—and bland-

faced Chinese. No smoking paraphernalia is to be found anywhere—though a suspicious brightness in the grate suggests recent addition of inflammable fuel.

I recall a raid in a Chinese silk goods shop in Palmerston North a few years ago. The shop opened quietly one morning in a little-fre-quented back street, but consistent observation convinced the police that the doors were never opened for business, although sale prices were continuously displayed in the tiuy window. A raid was planned and executed, and when the detectives eventually reached the back room they found it Ailed with opium smoke, and two Chinese—playing “patience.” A search later brought to light the pipes still warm from their recent exercise. Valuable “Garbage” Of course, Customs officers who operate on overseas ships do not confine their search to opium. Tobacco, silks and other contraband goods are often discovered in clever hiding places. A Customs man was searching a ship at Auckland one day when he suddenly pulled out the front of the piano and found it neatly filled with contraband cigars.

At one time the ship’s writer used to operate a roll duplicator for copying his various documents, and when going through the tropics the jelly roll had to be kept in the freezing chamber. A ship searcher happened upon one of these, and upon inspection found that the roll was made not of jelly, but of finely rolled silk which was being brought to New Zealand duty free—providing it could be successfully smuggled ashore. x It is reasonably safe to say that only a small portion of the contraband goods brought to New Zealand are seized by the authorities. A colossal piece of smuggling effrontery was perpetrated during the Dunedin Exhibition, when a gold cup which was being sent out from a noted firm of plate-makers was taken by a coolie from its case in the hold and stowed in a sugar sack in the centre of the coal heap. Later a close search led to its discovery—and to the imprisonment of the thief. At one time it was permissible to import opium to New Zealand, under penalty of a duty of 40s a lb. Those days have long since passed, however, and the struggling vendor of opium is now compelled to undergo the hardships, first of seeking out a safe hiding place for his goods, secondly of the suspense while the rummagers are at work, thirdly of getting the beastly stuff ashore, and fourthly —and perhaps lastly—of facing the ire of the syndicate for whom he is operating if any clue to identity is revealed.

The lot of the opium smuggler is a hard one!