Stool Pigeons For U.S. Drug Fight

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30092, 28 March 1963, Page 15

Stool Pigeons For U.S. Drug Fight

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, March 26. The United States Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.) announced today it plans to use disguised informers to infiltrate the underworld to try to break up illegal drug traffic, United Press International reported. The specially-trained agents, posing as underworld characters, would be equipped with two-way radios, unmarked cars and weapons for selfdefence.

I They would infiltrate the “hoodlum channels” througn which teen-agers and others obtain barbiturates and socalled “pep pills.” The plans were outlined by the F.D.A. commissioner. Mr George Larrick, who called the criminal traffic in sleeping pills and stimulant drugs a “tremendously growing menace" to the nation. Drug Outlets

Mr Larrick told the Senale Labour and Public Welfare Committee tfiat “cafs. bars, filling (petrol) stations .and places of ill-repute” are the outlets for illegal sale of drugs Teen-agers and others take pep pills "to raise the devil” and then swallow barbiturates “to go to sleep.” Mr Larrick said. The F.D.A asked Congress

to appropriate 10,000 dollars this year to train informers as part of a new police system “of the highest order." The F.D.A. police force was authorised in 1962 by a Congressional act, which was passed after the thalidomide drug scare, but no funds were appropriated, U.P.I. said.