LONDON’S DRUG TRAFFIC.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXIII, 19 December 1925, Page 9

LONDON’S DRUG TRAFFIC.

SCOTLAND‘YARD’S ATTACK. After a period of comparative quietness, London’s sinister drug traffic lias again reached widespread dimensions, and some of the cleverest brains .in Scotland Yard are engaged in tracking the traffickers of Limehouse and the AVest End (says “Reynold’s Newspaper”). For many weeks disguised detectives have been seeking for clues which will engble them to lay hands on the new “snow king." That there is a new leader is undeniable. Someone has stepped into the shoes of Brilliant Cliang, the notorious Chinaman, deported some time ago. Following Chang’s capture and sentence, his agents lay low for some time. While special attention is being given by the 0.1. D. to Limehouse, .the authorities know that to make any real progress they must concentrate on the other end, and watch for the men and women who offer the drugs for sale, and who act as decoys. Once suspected, the decoys have to he watched, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks, in order that they may be tracked to the place where they obtain their supplies. It is expected that sensational developments will occur. Scotland Yard has had to devise some new methods of detection. Gone are the days when a deliverer of “snow” met his or her client in the street and passed the drug with a handshake. No longer does an agent cultivate a certain district. !

I I had a talk recently 'with one of l the high officials at Scotland Yard, and he revealed to me some of the amazing methods employed by the | drug agents to get their stuff into the country. He told me of an instance which came under, his notice recently, when sr consignment of In-nocent-looking broom handles arrived from Germany. A keen-eyed Customs official noticed a tiny flaw in one of the handles. He examined It minutely, and discovered that it had been hollowed out and the cavity filled with raw opium. So had all , the others. “That,” said my informl ant, “was one of the least original !of their little games. Cocaine, as the drug which is most often in the i limelight, is often wrongly misnamed ‘snow.’ As a matter of fact, that was the old colour.' Nowadays it is usually dyed brown so that it may pass as snuff and defy detection. A favourite trick is to mix it with tobacco, and sometimes it occupies the middle of a cigarette. In this form it can be safely and easily offered to a purchaser during a casual conversation —on the top of a bus or in a theatre bar. Quite a common method is the splitting of an ordinary playing-card. The drug is spread thinly in the centre of one half, and the card stuck together again at the edges. “I do not think,” added the official, “that the drug traffic will ever be completely stamped out. It can only be consistently and remorselessly checked. The greed of gold is too strong in human nature to be overcome by punishment, even when it is penal servitude and, in the case of aliens, deportation.” The detective went on to give me remarkable details of the profit gained by illicit sellers of cocaine. “The packets of cocaine sold to the dope victims,” he said, “normally contain, about three grains. The price of this packet varies, of course, according to what the customer can pay. It is not a question of what he or she will pay, as (once in the clutches of the drug) the victim will give body and soul for a supply. In a long experience I have found that the price for a small three-grain packet never falls below 10s, and often reaches as high a figure as £5 ss. Pure cocaine costs about £1 an ounce, and the trafficker usually receives a small reduction, buying it at the rate of £ls a pound. This he sells at the colossal rate of £1,140 a pound—his profit being on an astounding scale. He pays his agents a small commission on sales, and is thus left with a tidy fortune. “The real risks, of course, are run by his agent, who must constantly face the perils and terrors of detection. These dupes are carefully selected as being little likely to dare defiance. Usually they are themselves slaves to the drug, and are forced to work at the dictation of the avaricious scoundrel who controls the supply under threats of ‘No sales, no cocaine.’ The business is diabolical, and few who do not actually come into contact with it realise the misery that it involves. “The worst part of it,” said the detective, in conclusion, “is that there are hundreds whom it is impossible to reclaim. Stop tlieir supplies and they would go mad. q’hese are the people who make the abolition of the drug traffic a well-nigh hopeless problem. As long as they can pay the price, miscreants will always be found who will run the risk Of putting into their hands cocaine, opium, and other products of the Orient, which in ignorant hands often mean suffering that Is worse than death.”