Europe’s booming heroin problem

Press, 29 April 1981, Page 21

Europe’s booming heroin problem

By

MICHAEL SHERIDAN,

NZPA-Reuter

The fashionable London districts of Chelsea and

Kensington are awash with d heroin, according to a doctor who sees sons and daughters I of wealthy families spending r a fortune to get their kicks t from the drug. h "In the last month we've c had more heroin calls than in h any; other month I can re- i member,” says Bob Nightin- I gale, of the Release Organ-, a isation, a partly Govern-ment-funded body that helps t addicts and drug users in t trouble with the law. i These two viewpoints re- I fleet a dramatic increase in i the amount of heroin on t British streets in the last-six months — and officials say <

this Europe-wide problem has now reached unprece-

dented' proportions. London agents of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.) believe Western Europe is heading for the biggest influx of heroin ever, from a newlyharvested record poppy crop in Laos, Thailand and Burma, the old “Golden Triangle.” But the present booming, trade in heroin plaguing Western Europe has its roots, in Pakistan. Afghanistan and Iran, the “Golden Crescent,” with'. Turkey a key transit country. Narcotics agents say most of Europe's heroin is still

processed by remote laboratories in eastern Turkey, which refine raw morphine smuggled in from the “Golden Crescent.” Mafia organisations supplying the United States also depend on the region for . much of their heroin, moving it through Sicily and Milan, , • the agents believe. The Turkish Government has publicly linked the heroin and arms trades. Wellinformed sources in London, who asked not to be .named, said that part of Turkey’s

heroin trade was in the hands of a far-Right urban guerrilla group known as “The Grey Wolves.” Immigrant workers travelling to host countries, particularly Britain and West Germany, were threatened with violence against themselves or relatives left behind in Turkey unless they agreed to act as couriers, the sources said. London-based officials of the D.E.A. say that organised crime in Britain is also investing money in the heroin

business. A measure of the increasing supply is that heroin seems to be the one luxury item that has beaten inflation. The “street price” in London is a maximum £BO ($194) a gram, unchanged from three years ago. “That’s why it's such a favourite with the rich kids,” said a release worker, “and since you can sniff it. the old taboo about needles has gone.” Taboos or not, Europe's addicts are on- the increase, and despite the smashing last year of an “Italian connection,” when 14 illicit laboratories in Italy were seized by police, officials believe the

new wave of heroin will also affect the United States. The International Narcotics Control Board, a United Nations body, said recently that drug abuse in Western Europe was reaching crisis level. , , West Germany recorded over 400 deaths caused by drug abuse in the first 10 months of last year, the board reported. The French President, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, recently appointed a special Minister to co-ordinate antidrug operations after official figures showed that 172 people died of overdoses in France in 1980. In Italy, heroin

abuse is associated with disillusion and a rejection of society, unlike the frivolity of London’s affluent users, there were 145 drug-related deaths last year. • London officials of the D.E.A. acknowledge that with political' conditions in Iran and Afghanistan preventing effective intelligence work, supply sources cannot be cut off, and efforts to stop trafficking by customs seizures are limited. But they say there has been a marked improvement in co-operation with Turkish police since last year's military coup, and this has resulted in several large-scale seizures.