War against cocaine stepped up

Press, 13 November 1985, Page 21

War against cocaine stepped up

DONALD TRELFORD,

, editor of the London

“Observer,” reports on a country where over 10 per cent are drug addicts.

The Bahamas are fighting the world’s first cocaine epidemic. More than 10 per cent of the population are addicts.

Many are teenagers, hooked inside 10 minutes of their first introduction to drugs by “freebasing,” a lethal method of smoking through a “rock” of cocaine that is 80 per cent proof, compared with 30 per cent from sniffing. “Free-basing,” an almost exclusively Bahamian phenomenon, is made possible by the easy availability of the drug. Cocaine and marijuana were openly on offer to sailors from the Royal yacht Britannia, as to all Nassau’s visitors, at last month’s meeting of Commonwealth leaders.

The 700 Bahamas islands, most of them unpopulated, lie in the direct path of the world’s main drug route between South and North America, bringing cocaine afji marijuana from Colombia to

Florida. Prime Minister Lynden Pindling called it “a plague on our shores.”

Drugs are brought on “mother ships” and broken down into small consignments for onward transmission in fast cigarette boats to the Florida coast. The nearest point to the United States is Bimini atoll, only 70 miles from Miami, a journey of less than an hour. Narcotics are also carried in bulk on C-47 Dakotas, which either land on remote island airstrips or drop their illicit cargo into the Caribbean at a pre-arranged spot, where local fishermen are briefed to collect and hide it.

Until recently the traffic has been almost impossible to stop because of the vast areas to patrol. Now, however, as the result of a new co-operative agreement betweeen the Bahamas and the United States, the drug enforcement agencies believe they may at last be making headway.

The breakthrough came when Mr Pindling offered to help the antidrugs campaign launched by the United States Vice-President, George Bush. His Minister for National Security, Loftus Roker, now provides Bahamian liaison officers to work with the Americans, empowered to authorise raids on suspect boats of any nationality within Bahamian waters.

After six months the joint haul amounts to 217,0001 b of marijuana and four metric tons of cocaine. They have captured 47 vessels, eight aircraft and 150 men. The United States coastguard commander, Rear Admiral Cueroni, described this as “a major milestone and our highest priority weapon in the drugs war.” Another official said: “You don’t have to catch them all. You just have to raise the level of risk so that the game isn’t worth the candle to the operators.” He claimed that “integrated activity” with the Bahamian Government had resulted in “substantial progress” in recent months.

Along with stepping up the war against the traffickers, Mr Pindling has also begun to tackle the country’s endemic probleip of addiction.

The main problem here is that windfall profits from handling drugs are the only source of income for many islanders. The campaign is led by Dr David Allen, a Bahamian doctor who trained at Guy’s Hospital in London and became a psychiatry professor at Yale. It was his sensational report that first alerted the world to the drug problem on the Bahamas two years ago. He is greatly admired by United States drug officials for his “missionary zeal.” One of them told me: “He’s, so honest it’s frightening.” As head of the National Drug Council, Dr Allen has launched a series of programmes to combat drug abuse. I sat in on one of his community meetings in Nassau. About 20 addicts, ranging from an 81-year-old grandmother to a teen-age girl threatening suicide, sat in a circle telling their stories in sing-song island accents. They were all on rehabilitation programmes. Some had volunteered, some had been picked up off the street.

Two girls, both newcomers, said they wanted to give up cocaine because they had hallucinations. Dr Allen challenged them: “'You’re

lying. It’s a great drug. It makes you feel good, why give it up? You don’t really mean it.” One very thin man in red jeans admitted to sniffing the previous night. “The urge came on me,” he said, “just as a pusher showed up. It was as if he was reading my mind.” “You haven’t said ‘No’ to cocaine yet,” Dr Allen advised him quietly. “We believe in you. Do you believe in yourself? Deep down you don’t like yourself.” One of the other patients added: “Look what it’s done to your body, man — think what it’s doing to your head.” Another boy was told: “Come on, you’re scared of ladies, isn’t that your problem?” "The only thing I’m scared of is cocaine,” he replied firmly. Many complained of depressions that prevented them working. Those who had kept off the drug for several weeks were applauded. One woman moved people to tearful applause when she said she had just been allowed to see her children again and hoped to get them back. The suicidal girl was told: “You’re angry with your father.

You mustn’t give him so much power over your life. He’s the one with the problem. You’re a special person, a beautiful person.” As a result of this campaign, which gets financial backing from both Mr Pindling and the United States Government, Dr Allen claims that suicides and other deaths from cocaine are slowly coming down. The Bahamas Opposition claims that Mr Pindling and other senior figures have received huge bribes from drug dealers. A Royal Commission a year ago produced evidence of illegal payments, and several Bahamas Ministers and the Assistant Commissioner of Police have since been charged with offences. The Commission found that Mr Pindling himself had received substantial sums from friends, some with dubious associations but concluded (with one dissenter) that there was no evidence to link him directly with the narcotics trade. Since then he has been under political pressure to call an election — Parliament has not sat for five months — and has stepped up action on the drugs front to help i restore his image.