COCAINE SMUGGLING.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 7 January 1926, Page 8

COCAINE SMUGGLING.

H IDDEN IN SHIR’S MAST. MANY INGENIOUS METHODS EMPLOYED. Specimens of the ingenious hiding ,e.s used by drug smugglers noted in a report el the British Opium Advisory Committee are: Morphia concealed m ' casks ot, embolic acid crystals. . Cocaine hidden m a mast and onlj found by unscrewing ail oblong manhole door. . , The Indian drug, gaiija, concealed in the smuggler’s hair and between slices of bread. ... , Cacaine found behind the cushions in a ship’s officers’ saloon. . Two thousand ounces of opium hsueci up bv the lighthouse-Keeper Lorn tie sea off the breakwater at Singapore. Hard pressed by the vigilance ol police and Customs officers in all ports, drug smugglers have devised the most astounding methods <>f concealing their illicit goods. In Germany and Belgium there exists firms who are specially engaged in inventing these devices. In a seizure on ihc premises or a Rotterdam firm of 540 kilograms ot raw opium the drug was tound concealed in bookcases. The men responsible were a Russian aid a r ole, and when the cases were examined by experts it was found that they had been specially constructed for tins ch.ndes line traffic. OPIUM IN LlhEBhiMS.

A short time ago in hoard a steamship at Calcutta a number of lifejackets came under the suspicion of an Indian Government official, who mid them opened. inside were’ n Jiumoer ot specially curved tins, which fitted peifectly in the life-belts. The tins, in order to resemble cork, were completely lined with a tliin layer of tr At material. Yet all the fins were idled with opium. Recently quantities ol t-li© dj i g hashish or Indian hemp have been getting into Egypt, and efforts v.eie made to discover the source. Eventual!v a consignment of no less than ten tons was discovered in. Abyssinia. It had been imported by a permit obtained by false pretences, the drug being declared as liemp cake or '■-harms, mtended for destroying caterpillars, of which there are frequent plagues ni Egypt and Sudan. ... The export from Switzerland is, in the opinion of the League of Nation authorities, an enormous one. _ In a seizure at Roterdam this year the consignment consisted of: — 2400 grammes of morphine. 157,600 grammes of heroin.

120,625 grammes of cocaine

All this had been obtained from a firm in Zurich, and was found in a shed of the Holland-Amerika line. The drugs were partly concealed in photograph frames, specially made. INTERNATIONAL GANG.

The agents (in reporting on the case, state that this shipment was being engineered by an international gang, led by a man named Uffner, residing in Paris and New York; and that six similar shipments had already been made from Rotterdam .and Hamburg. An English firm some tim© ago lost its license to manufacture drugs as the result of discoveries in Denmark which, led to seizures of morphia and other drugs in Amov, China and Hongkong. “They were imported into "Denmark,”’ states the report of the investigators, “from England and Germany by post, railway and sea. Inquiries were made by tlie Danish Government at the request of the British Government, resulting in the withdrawing of a license from a, German firm at Copenhagen and the expel'ing from that country of a man named Sengpiel, the director. The license of the English firm was eventually cancelled by the Home Office authorities.” ... Th© report shows that the British authorities engaged tn fighting the international drug traffic stand easily first in supplying information on which seizures all over the world are made.