THE DRUG TRAFFIC

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 19052, 16 September 1933, Page 12 (Supplement)

THE DRUG TRAFFIC

Amazing new ramifications of the drug traffic, despite the efforts of tho League of Nations to suppress It, were revealed recently by Lieut.General Sir George MacMunn, K.C.8., D. 5.0.. states the Manchester Sunday Chronicle. For three years the League has carried on a determined campaign to -hunt down the dope barons, Illicit drug factories, and the European ring of smugglers, but although the trajokers have •been driven from one country to another their sinister trade goes on.

Sir George MacMunn, who knows the East—he was Commander-In-Chief in Mesopotamia and then Quarter-master-General in 'lndia —tells of the unceasing world war that is being waged on the trafflo and discloses some of the astounding methods employed by the smugglers. An unsuspecting lady in London buying her evening paper from a news-vendor near Victoria Station, London, recently, asked the man: “How can I get to New Scotland Yard?" The vendor looked at her, pushed a packet into her hand and moved off. The hurrying crowd disturbed her, and the man was out of sight. Jumping into a bus she looked at the packet, opened it, and found a white powder. She took it to a chemist and told him what had happened. “Why, Miss, this is snow—cocaine 1” Ingenious Methods. That was all. Had she used unconsciously a password? Was the vendor unloading, in view of danger? Nobody knows, but it was a queer incident of the persistent traffic in drugs that goes on under the keenest police eyes and noses. As one method of smuggling passes another is invented. I have seen a stout woman fighting to retain an oldfashioned pair of corsets that police were removing. The heavy double seams were packed with cocaine 1

The habitual criminal learns "to pouch,” that is, to make a receptacle in the soft skin of the epiglottis—easy .enough if a lead disc be worn suspended from a tooth. Ingenuity is always the master of ordinary prevention, and it is only by International agreement that the curse can be removed, factories eliminated, the production of hemp, cocaine, and the like controlled. Thirty-one of the Powers and States represented at Geneva have subscribed to the Limitation Convention of 1931 for the control of the illicit drug traffic. The drug barons of the underworld are.uneasy, they are being moved on; their complex machinery conceived in devilment, and prosecuted with an Ingenuity worthy of the finest cause, is running out of gear, making for itself new channels, but going onl Toils of the Drug Craving. Drugs are the need of the underworld and. many who should know better—how cruel, how Intensely evil, the upper world only stays to think when some wretched society woman is caught in the toils. Drugs are required by many of the tired and weary l to give them a spurious rest—by many who would while away the hours in their specious effects rather than work for healthy fatigue. In the East, in India above all, are they in great demand. Because the League of Nations has taken up the matter seriously, because Egypt is the great alleyway between East and West and North and South; because Egypt smuggles hashish as other folk drink water, the Commandant of the Cairo police, Russell Pasha, the anti-drug specialist and enthusiast, was made in 1929 director of the newly-formed Central Narcotics Intelligence Bureau, working both under tho Egyptian Government and the League of Nations. For three years now the persistent hunting down of the drug barons, the illicit drug factories, and the whole

Amazing Revelations of Intrigue. Ingenious Smuggling Methods.

machinery of consignment and smuggling proceeds apace at his hands. Directly the Great Powers with efficient police get to work the pressure of production becomes intense in unrestrained countries. When France took drastio action in j 1930 the barons went to Turkey. The factories on the Bosphorus were turning out 1J tons of heroin, that most pernicious of all the opium products, per month. The Ghazi was appealed to. By December, 1932, a sharp Turkish law was passed, and the police got to work. The factories moved to Bulgaria. There, at present, despite Bulgaria’s adherence to the Convention of 1931, they remain in full public swing, for all the world even to photograph. Smuggling of Hashish. The central Bureau has now oom- . plete dossiers and portraits of all these drug barons and their more important agents, though the latter are kaleidoscopic enough. The leaders are unprepossessing looking scoundrels, with the usual Greek names or* Italian names and American citizenship. But since Greece last year changed her then ineffective law, Greece herself will offer them no home. The trouble of Egypt Is largely hashish smuggling, which, though perhaps the least harmful of the drugs, leads to the. craving for heroin. The struggles with smugglers by the Egyptian police are often fierce and dramatic, for the low-class Arabs employed by the agents are quite prepared to put up a stout fight, and are well armed. . Shipping in Port Said is, of course, a constant source from which smuggling takes place. The hollow tubes of brass bedsteads, the grease boxes on railway axles, camel saddles, the soles of shoes, and every place likely and unlikely are used —a largish consignment of hashish was found last year in shaven patches under the fleece on the humps of shaggy camels. The Egyptian courts now mete out summary and heavy punishments- to convicted traffickers. International Campaign. During 1932 the smuggler king Of Egypt and' several accomplices who had long defied the police got five years each. The leader, Muhammad • Mustapha Nafe, an Egyptian of good family and Spanish extraction, had held various offices of State before taking to crime. To this new role he brought several languages, and could pose as of almost any Southern European nationality. The total number of oonvlctions during 1932 was considerable. Russell Pasha left Egypt in April to attend the League of Nations, and will no doubt press those States who lag behind to bring their house into bona fide order. ; If Bulgaria oannot reform, Turkey can out off her opium. With the trade on the run, and the barons disconcerted, there should be no cities of refuge left for them. The trafflo in China will need the League’s close study. Japanese -chemists have transferred themselves to Manchuria and China, and while since T 917 heroin has flowed Into China from Europe, restriction hi the West has now resulted In factories In Shanghai and Tientsin and elsewhere, having Chinese opium as the basis. But we may be sure that Russell Pasha, whose tentacles of information are everywhere, will have plenty of. information, and -can further curtail the traffic of the ’international drug stars.”