TON OF DRUGS SEIZED

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 January 1934, Page 10

TON OF DRUGS SEIZED

HOLLYWOOD ADDICTS.

GENEVA, November 18.

Astonishing revelations of how drugs are smuggled round the world are contained in a League of Nations Committee report published here today.

An outstanding point is that more than one ton of opium and other drugs have been confiscated in the last few months by countries which have signed the new Drug Convention. The following are some of the incidents recorded. Drugs have been hidden between the false sides of oil drums consigned to Los Angeles. There is evidence to suggest that these were intended for the film colony of A Cochin-Chinese waiter at Marseilles was detected with 601 b. of raw opium which he had concealed in a third-class cabin on a steamship from the Near East. He had bought it for <£2s at Constantinople, and hoped to sell it in France.

A packet of opium was discovered floating near a. ship->in New York harbour. A similar package attached to a motor-car tyre was taken out of the sea at Sourabaya, in the Dutch East Indies.

Ao show the limits to which drug smugglers will go, the case of the socalled official export of drugs from Germany to Venezuela in August, 1932, is quoted. These drugs were sent under an alleged official doccument. Both Governments were, however, entirely innocent of the transaction, the document having been forged. Drugs found in double-soled shoes, or concealed in false-bottomed trunks, or in the mechanism of trains are only a few of the many disclosures made in the report.