WAR ON DOPE GANGS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 282, 28 November 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

WAR ON DOPE GANGS.

PLANS TO CHECK TRAFFIC

RUSES WITH ACID,

Drug smuggling on an alarmingly widespread scale by gangs of international traffickers operating in Britain and other European countries is to engage the close attention of a special committee of the League of shortly. , m New facts revealing the recent activities of. these known gangs of traffickers are to be placed before the committee —the Permanent Central Opium Board—who will then .plan new measures to be taken against the illicit drug dealers. Figures already in the possession of the board show that in one year more than twelve tons more morphine than the world requires for legitimate purposes were manufactured. Poison for Thousands. An indication that this surplus o£ the drug was being disposed of illicitly was

the discovery that six tons of benzoylmorpliirie of European oi'igin had passed into illegal channels. This quantity represents GOO million doses —sufficient to poison .hundreds of thousands of'people.-

In Egypt and Vienna amazing discoveries have been made of 'highly-organised gangs of traffickers with countless ramification? in different countries. The Stuber gang, for instance, was proved to have exported large quantitiees of morphine and heroin to the Far East, via Turkey. Police reports on this case cast suspicion on European factories apparently in touch with the gang. It was found that large quantities of heroin and morpnine were being smuggled by the trick of hiding the dangerous drugs in boxes of boric acid and salicylic acid.