DRUGS BY AIR.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 955, 27 December 1933, Page 1

DRUGS BY AIR.

Plan to Prevent Smuggling Outlined. LONDON, December 10. How dangerous drugs are smuggled by air from Canada to the United States was described to the Opium Advisory Committee of the' League of Nations at Geneva by Mr Fuller, the American representative. While established air lines try to prevent smuggling by their machines, private aeroplanes offer great opportunities, he said, according to the Geneva correspondent of the London “ News Chronicle.” The usual procedure is as follows: An aeroplane leaves a regular Canadian airport with a legitimate cargo, and starts on the regular route for the United States. When out of sight, it descends at a spot where contraband cargo is waiting. The plane then proceeds across the frontier to a place agreed on for the delivery of the contraband, and subsequently returns to Canada, where it flies as conspicuously as possible on a regular route. The only way to combat this, said Mr Fuller, was by aeroplane patrols, but the difficulty was that, when pursued, an American plane descends in Canadian territory, and vice versa, and the United States Government had therefore made an arrangement with the Canadian Government for the arrest of smugglers on either side of the frontier. Under United States laws, aeroplanes engaged in smuggling can be confiscated. and it was with confiscated planes that the first air patrol was started in Texas. Although the equipment cost nothing, the operation was expensive. Smugglers sometimes had been pursued for 200 miles or more, but when the planes were captured, their contents consisted chiefly of contraband liquor. Drugs, in view of their light weight, the small space they occupied and the heavy penalties imposed, were thrown overboard. Although in two years sixty-five planes had been seized and onlv liquor had been found, the authorities were convinced that aeroplanes were used for the illicit drug traffic.