Menace of Drugs 100,000 Addicts in Egypt

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 840, 7 December 1929, Page 22

Menace of Drugs 100,000 Addicts in Egypt

a HAT Egypt is the victim of pernicious drug traffickers to a really appalling extent is revealed by Lewa T. W. Russell Pasha, Commandant of the Cairo City Police, in a covering letter which he forwarded to the Minister of the Interior with his annual report. “Unless it is quickly checked,” he says, “this narcotic addiction is going to be the ruin of Egypt.” Dealers are amassing huge fortunes, and there is hardly a family in the country but has a slave of this vice among its relatives and friends. “Of 22,000 persons in State prisons today,” Russell Pasha goes on to say, “over 6,000 are drug addicts.

“X maintain that for every addict in prison there are 30, and probably 100, not in prison, thus giving a figure of at least 100,000 addicts in the country. “Several authorities consider that this figure is underestimated, and place it at half a million. “I can prove that the country spends £700,000 a year on hasheesh wholesale, which represents nearly a million and a-half in final retail. “I can prove that one Armenian dealer in Cairo alone imported 600 kilograms of heroin in two years, which at wholesale price represents £50,000. “I will allow the reader to make (Continued in next column.)

his own calculation as to what this has cost the country, when I say that heroin is peddled in final retail at £3OO a kilogram. “This man is only one of many big dealers. “In our cities today there are scores of* educated young men walking the gutter, having lost employment, home and everything by their slavery to heroin.” Russell Pasha declares in conclusion that drug addiction is "the most important enemy of public security and public welfare that exists today in Egypt.” He expresses the hope that the newly-established antinarcotic bureau will be able to fight this Egyptian plague. Referring to the Armenian drug dealer who imported 600 kilograms (over half a ton) of heroin into Egypt during two years, a Cairo correspondent reports that the man was sentenced to two years in prison, with a fine of £SOO. He appealed against this stiff but deserved sentence, but judgment went against him, and he is now serving his term of imprisonment. It is hoped that this ease will have a salutary effect in reducing the appalling extent of the drug traffic in Egypt.