DRUG SMUGGLERS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 27, 1 February 1924, Page 7

DRUG SMUGGLERS

COCAINE IN AUSTRALIA

/AVENUE FOR/ILLICIT TRADE

GROWN BEYOND ALL BOUNDS.

(CMTED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPIBIGBT.)

SYDNEY, 31st January.

The police and Customs officers are making an effort to capture - cocaine smugglers, who are landing large quantities of the drug in the Commonwealth. The trade has considerably increased since the tightening of the American laws, dealers having chosen the Australian market as one of its new avenues for illicit trade, which is now apparently grown beyond all bounds. There is hardly any doubt that a combination of dealers, with hundreds of thousands of pounds at their back, have been doing an immense business in the drug, and are sending it from the Continent to ports in various part* of the( world. It has been suggested that the trade is directed at bringing about, as much as possible in countries outside Germany, a condition detrimental to the "physical state ol the people/ The Customs officials stated that Sydney, which la receiving most of the drug entering Australia, is full of cocaine, and sellers are unable to obtain a marEet for it at the old prices. Inquiries resulted in the police obtaining information that smuggling is carried on by women and men sent from overseas.