DRUG SMUGGLING

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19942, 29 October 1934, Page 5

DRUG SMUGGLING

JAPANESE SYNDICATE The operations of a mysterious and sinister Japanese who is the head of a £2,000,000 gang of international dope smugglers have become so alarming that the League of Nations Permanent Central Opium Board is to take action. The Board recently met behind closed doors at Geneva to consider means of curbing the menace. "We are growing more and more suspicious of this strange figure," said Mr Aldous, of the League of Nations “It, Is believed that he. is backed by a powerful syndicate in Japan and that by using factories in the puppet stale of Manchukuo he is able to flood the world with Illicit drugs. It is to put an end to tils activities that the Board has decided to hold this meeting ” The name of tills amazing charac-

ter is known to the police of both Europe and America. He is as well known on Broadway as he is in London's fashionable night haunts, as familiar in the gay cafes of Montmarte as in the beer gardens of Berlin. But the police are powerless to act. Now and then one of his agents will slip up—the last to be caught was an Englishman—but he himself never makes a mistake. They can prove nothing against him. The Board has already made great strides in its work to curb the dope traffic. It has limited the manufacture of drugs by factories in Europe. Turkey and Egypt to an absolute minimum. To-day these factories produce only enough drugs to meet medical and scientific needs. But the Board did not reckon with the devilish ingenuity of "The Jap." Finding his former sources of supply cut off, he started to raid consignments intended for hospitals. It matterc-* *- win. that th. drugs might be urgently required to relieve the sufferings ot some poor person dying in agony. „

Even ships carrying drugs for medical use abroad have been rifled—so cleverly as to leave no trace. Only the other day a cargo steamer from Hamburg arrived at her port of call in Uruguay. When she sailed there was £IOO,OOO worth of morphine, packed away in wooden cases, in her hold. On arrival the cases appeared to be intact, but when they were opened it was found that the drug had vanished It is believed that the cases were raided while the ship was still in harbour at Hamburg, the drug placed in watertight cases, and dropped overboard attached to bags of salt. When the sa’ 1 °d the cases would come to the surface again, and could then be picked up by agents oi the gang. Such was only one example of “The Jap’s” cunning which has stirred the Board to take immediate action.