Drug Traffic Increase

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31323, 20 March 1967, Page 13

Drug Traffic Increase

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) WASHINGTON, March 19.

Illicit marijuana traffic in the United States has more than doubled during the last two years, spreading at an alarming rate among middle-class university students. The Federal Narcotics Commissioner, Mr Henry L. Giordano, said the Bureau of Narcotics was particularly concerned that the increased marijuana traffic was “reaching age groups and economic levels which were relatively drug-free previously.”

“Increased traffic among college-age persons of middle or upper economic status represents a radical change in patterns,” he told a House Appropriations Sub-committee in testimony made public last week. Mr Giordano disclosed that the Bureau of Narcotics had conducted investigations at 50 universities across the country into beatnik or drop-out groups involved in the use of marijuana, L.S.D., “goof balls” and pep pills. “I think really that the problem is the attitude that is developing among some

people that there is nothing wrong with marijuana, which encourages these people to engage in this traffic,” he said. Arrests Rise “It is a dangerous drug, no matter how you spell it. It Is not, as some people say, less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco.” Marijuana arrests have risen from 7000 in 1964 to more than 15,000 in 1966. While the Government has no statistics on the number of marijuana users who graduate to opium and heroin, a survey made several years ago revealed that about 40 per cent —of heroin addicts admitted starting on marijuana. “Not every individual who smoked a marijuana cigarette automatically went to heroin, but the individual who starts using marijuana normally is looking for some kicks and after a while, the marijuana kicks are not enough and they go to heroin,” Mr Giordano said.

Most of the marijuana brought into the United States was smuggled across the Mexican border, where customs agents seized about six tons of its during 1966. Mr Giordano also said that the flow of narcotics from China to the United States was becoming an “increasing problem.”

He traced the route of opium from Yunnan province in China, through northern Thailand, Burma and Laos to Singapore and Hong Kong. “The permanent Central Opium Board of the United Nations estimates that about 1000 tons of opium come from that area,” Mr Giordano said. “I think the situation in South-east Asia, as far as narcotic drugs is concerned, is quite critical.”