Course On Smuggling

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31923, 26 February 1969, Page 30

Course On Smuggling

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, Feb. 25. An eight-day intensive course on smuggling prevention opened in Auckland today for 10 new officers of the Customs Department.

The course is a bid to strengthen measures against the illegal entry by sea and air, of narcotics and contraband goods.

Six men who started will be attached to the Wellington customs. The other four will join the department in Auckland. Introducing the course, Mr M. J. O’Connor, collector of customs in Auckland, said: “Smugglers are ingenious. They have been operating for a very long time and you will have to match your wits against them.” Wide Powers The officers would be instructed in those parts of the Customs Act which concerned them as preventive officers, and they would come to realise their powers were extensive.

“We do not delude ourselves that the additional appointments to the preventive service will sound the deathknell for the smuggler, but we do hope that the extra manpower, the training which we will provide, and the more effective use of our resources will make the

smuggler’s life more difficult,” he said. There had been a great deal of publicity on the drug problem and the figures recently released by the Minister of Police (Mr Allen) must give cause for alarm, especially in the Port of Auckland where the situation seemed to be worse than elsewhere.

“I am personally satisfied,” said Mr O’Connor, “that to date there has been no more than an insignificant trickle of narcotics illegally imported. “To some degree our department can claim credit for this, but I think the simple fact is there has been relatively easy availability from supplies which have entered the country through legitimate channels.”

This easy availability would soon cease, and it would be prudent to expect that the importing pattern could change, he said.