‘AIR HOSTESSES SMUGGLING DRUGS’

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33753, 28 January 1975, Page 6

‘AIR HOSTESSES SMUGGLING DRUGS’

(.V«w Zealand Presi Association —Copprspht) LONDON, January 27. Air hostesses are smuggling increasing amounts of drugs into London, according to drug experts at Heathrow Airport.

The girls are bringing in distilled cannabis resin hidden in false bras, lipsticks and hair sprays, the experts claim. Contacts in London are believed to be at the centre of a massive drugs trafficking ring based mainly in Afghanistan and parts of East Africa, they added. One senior officer said: “It is well known that women are less likely to be. searched than men. For a start a woman has to be frisked by another woman and there aren’t many women friskefs at the airport.”

The officer went on: “Air girls are handed sachets of liquid cannabis, for example, and these are easily hidden in falsies and in the base of hair spray canisters.” Attractive air girls “plaster themselves in perfume” before they go through the routine check by customs men at the airport, he said. When the girls enter Britain, they meet contacts either at the airport or in

I the West End to dispose of | the goods, he claimed. A stewardess explained; how the system works. “The Way it starts is you are approached by a man in a bar or restaurant who says he has a relative who is ill in England,” she said.: “The girls are asked to take a packet of drugs to the sick aunt or grandmother.” The stewardess added: “It happened to me once in India when an Indian handed me a bulky letter and asked, me to give it to his mother who was ill.” . She said she- knew of some cases of stewardesses being “hooked" and later being involved in heavy drug smuggling. “They are told there is money in it for them and if they don’t collaborate they will be shopped.” she said. “From then on, it is a downward path.”

The stewardess said that crew members had an unwritten law to turn in a colleague suspected of smuggling drugs. “Many of us think that if gold smuggling is on, then drugs certainly are not,” she said. “We don’t want to get involved with people killing themselves.” An American stewardess at Heathrow said: “We are constantly pestered by men who are in drug smuggling rings. They flit in and out of hotels trying to make contacts with air crews to get the stuff on the move. “Our instructions are to contact airline security men as soon as we are approached. If they think we are not going to . play, they vanish.” But - the stewardess said that some girls were "caught up” because they could see the possibility of big financial rewards. “As far as most of us are concerned, gold is all right but drugs are not,” she added.

An investigator helping to probe drug smuggling at Heathrow Airport said that quantities of cocaine are finding their way into London front South America.