12

Carpets, Condoms and Cats

For a good deal of its history, other than for medical use, opium has been an illegal commodity: even the centuries-long, Indo-Chinese opium trade was, for much of its existence, nothing more than a smuggling enterprise, albeit a vast one. There has, thus, always existed a strong bond between opium and criminality.

It is inevitable that so long as world opium production exceeds basic legitimate demand, for medicinal or research purposes, there will exist an illegal market developed for the surplus and controlled by criminal traffickers who will have a vested interest in maintaining or expanding this market at every opportunity, increasing the size of the surplus. Drug traffickers are, save in their illegality, no different from any other commodity entrepreneur operating in the best spirit of free trade and, because of the addictive nature of their wares, they will have no problem selling their product. As William Burroughs noted in the introduction to his novel, The Naked Lunch, published in 1959: ‘Junk is the ideal product … the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy.’ Any risks traffickers take are countered by substantial profits: no addict can complain about the cost of his fix.

Traffickers have always drawn supplies from one of two basic sources. First, they have purchased opium from countries where poppy cultivation is legal but where a percentage of the harvest escapes the attention of the authorities, despite state or tax controls. Quantities have depended upon governmental efficiency in the control of trading and farmers. An example of such a source was Turkey where, prior to 1972 when the government banned poppy growing, 25 per cent of the opium harvest vanished into a black market: in 1971, Pakistan legally produced 6 tons of opium, but approximately another 200 tons over-production was similarly diverted. The respective authorities could not prevent this ‘hidden’ trade as the farmers received higher returns from the illegal traders and were thus encouraged to grow more than was legally required.

Second, supplies have been purchased from countries where poppy cultivation is officially forbidden but enforcement lacking due to inefficiency, undermanning of police and excise agencies, corruption or a governmental inability to address the general situation. Sometimes illegal poppy crops have been either undiscovered or officially regarded as non-existent and therefore ignored.

The situation has changed little in three-quarters of a century. In the 1920s, it was reckoned for every medicinal ounce of opium sold internationally on the legitimate market, 10 ounces traded illegally on the global black market. A League of Nations publication in 1938 stated, between 1925 and 1930, at least 90 tons of morphine had been manufactured in excess of legitimate requirements and sold illegally: virtually no country was free from illicit opium, the trade increasing pro rata with the political instabilities in the Far East and Europe as the Second World War approached. At the time, most smuggled raw opium came from Iran or China with Turkey providing the clandestine factories for the manufacture of morphine.

Then, as ever, the traffickers’ aim was profit at as high a margin over cost as the market (in other words, the addict) could sustain. Two vague categories of trafficking existed: the first was smuggling into countries where opiates were illegal, the second importing into countries where they were legal but controlled and subject to excise. The former were drug runners in the modern sense, the second contraband excise dodgers in the age-old tradition of the buccaneer.

Merely by evading duty, the buccaneer-type smuggler stood to turn a tidy profit. A 1909 smuggling case illustrates the possible profit level involved in even a modest operation. Stewards aboard the North German Lloyd line passenger steamer, Kronprinzessin Cecilie, regularly smuggled opium and codeine into New York, where it was subject to an importation levy. With the co-operation of the ship’s watchmen and a corrupt customs inspector, they passed the drugs to an American confederate who sold them to pharmaceutical firms. Customs agents caught the ring in February 1909. It was discovered the stewards had purchased codeine in Germany for 440 Deutschmarks a kilogram, about $1 per ounce. The duty evaded was $1 an ounce and the supply was sold at $5 an ounce.

High profit margins have always meant traffickers have been sufficiently well bankrolled to outwit or bribe the authorities. One example out of thousands was to be found in the early 1920s on the railway line running to the Chinese province of Shansi. A locomotive driver on a monthly salary of $40 would be paid $200 for carrying a small packet of morphine. The provincial governor promised a $3 reward for every packet seized: the traffickers paid railway inspectors $6 for every undetected packet. Every so often, the inspectors were permitted to make a worthwhile seizure to bring them credit and give their work viability. The remainder of the time, they carried out superficial checks and confiscated nothing. Almost everyone was a winner – the drivers got their smuggling fees, the inspectors got their bribes (and an occasional reward bonus) and the gubernatorial authorities thought they had the situation under control: the only loser was the addict who had to foot the bill.

Traffickers have not just relied upon something as coarse as corruption to meet their ends. Many have been familiar with the legal systems of their target countries, using these to their advantage, especially in the early years of international control when legal complexities occurred because more than one country was involved in a transaction. What was legal practice in one place was not in another. The Advisory Committee was told in 1927 of three-quarters of a ton of morphine found in the possession of known traffickers who had purchased it through the French office of a Swiss pharmaceutical company which had imported it legally into France, there being no import licence required. Such loopholes were widened further because many governments were lukewarm to the idea of controls and usually set light punishments for trafficking. Other smuggling opportunities arose in the early years through the naming and classification of drugs. The constant invention of new drugs meant smugglers could trade in them before they were listed as controlled. The 1925 Convention controlled morphine and its salts. The smugglers promptly traded in benzoyl-morphine, a derivative but not a salt, yet from which morphine could be recovered.

Smuggling networks have often been very complex and convoluted. From 1906, when opium was made illegal in China, there grew up a substantial smuggling network of both foreign opium into China and Chinese-grown opium out of it. In 1925, Hong Kong customs seized 3.5 tons of allegedly Chinese opium, along with a hoard of documentation outlining the existence and the modus operandi of several powerful Chinese smuggling syndicates. The current total consumption of legal Indian opium in Hong Kong was 22.5 tons per annum. The documents showed just one syndicate was smuggling such an amount annually. They were not just dealing in Chinese product: 8.5 tons of raw Persian opium was found in a cave on an island near Hong Kong and a seizure of drugs and documents in Shanghai in 1925 proved the extensive importation of Turkish opium shipped from Constantinople via Vladivostok. At the same time, huge quantities of morphine were being smuggled into China via Manchuria by Japanese traffickers.

Macau was also a smuggling centre. Under an agreement with China in 1913, Macau was permitted to import 260 chests of opium a year for domestic consumption and 240 chests for re-export outside China. However, this was usually smuggled into China, the destination disguised by erroneous way-bills or the opium substituted: one opium consignment bound for Mexico was seized by Chinese authorities but found to consist of molasses. The opium was en route for Canton. Such opium was often wrapped or labelled to appear to come from China itself, a trick employed globally to place the blame for trafficking upon the Chinese. A huge haul of 14,000 assorted packages of heroin, morphine and cocaine was made in an hotel on West 40th Street, New York City, in 1922: amongst the narcotics were printing plates for Chinese opium labels.

Before the advent of the airliner, most smuggling was inevitably done by sea. Not only were ships trading internationally but a vessel offered a multitude of hiding-places. On 25 February 1929, 194 pounds of opium were found on SS Kut Sang in Hong Kong harbour, the drugs concealed in the hollow base of an anchor davit. The original rivets of the base plate had been replaced by screws with heads resembling rivets. This was no more ingenious than in many other instances, such as the morphine and heroin seized by Chinese customs at Tientsin in 1921 from the Japanese vessel, SS Awaji Maru, concealed in blocks of sulphate of soda. Customs records across the world are littered with reported hidey-holes: morphine in canvas sacks suspended down ventilator shafts; opium buried in coal bunkers and coke holds, tucked into blanket lockers or, on SS Montauk, hidden in a cavity cut into the aftermast. In 1938, 850 hermetically sealed tins of opium were found by New York customs in a false bottom to a fuel-oil tank on a British ship, SS Silveryew. Cargoes provided good camouflage: opium or heroin has appeared, amongst many others, in cargoes of dried shrimps, soap (with opium cakes looking like the bars of soap), in duck egg shells packed alongside real eggs, in Bologna sausage skins, in barrels of cement, in loaves of bread and in tins marked pickled cabbage. False labelling often disguised the true nature of a cargo, with just a few containers holding drugs, the remainder being the genuine article. Passengers also carried drugs, with the ubiquitous false bottomed suitcase being a favourite method.

Where a ship was found to be smuggling, a common penalty was to fine the ship’s owners although, on occasion, the captain might be able to convince the authorities of his, the crew and the owners’ innocence. The captain of SS Silveryew succeeded in allaying a fine, the manager of the Silver Line stating on behalf of the owners:

This is the work of an organised gang who try it on all ships going from the Far East to America … No one knows how they work or get the opium on board. It is a great mystery to me how they could have got that enormous amount of dope aboard without being seen. The only way they can be found out … is when one of their own gang gives them away. I think this happened in the present case.

The Second World War generally made things difficult for international smugglers, with supply regions being cut off. Illicit opiate sales dropped sharply in 1939—40 and only slowly increased during the war years. As the war continued, most smuggling was conducted on a small scale by individual merchant sailors or troops returning home.

In the United States, heroin from Mexico began to arrive, carried by peasant couriers: they were colloquially known as ‘mules’, a name which has stuck to drug couriers ever since. Opium, being bulky, was brought across the Rio Grande on rafts to be onward transported in baggage on trains, buses or in private cars. For what is probably the first time in the history of narcotics, it was also flown in by light aircraft.

In the Middle East, military transport was used to shift drugs around the region but so too were camels, which were made to carry opium in smooth-ended metal cylinders they were forced to swallow. A smuggling camel could be discovered by the wounds on its mouth caused by the forced feeding. It was said a camel could hold 7.5 kilograms in its belly for at least a month without discomfort. The habit lasted after the war for in 1952 Egyptian customs officers impounded a camel suspected of smuggling. In time, it became drowsy and was slaughtered. Inside its stomach were found twenty-eight rubber containers of opium of which at least one had leaked, causing the beast’s stupefaction. Rubber was used to avoid discovery by a metal detector and the trick was still in use at least to the 1970s for the transport of heroin by camel over the Turko-Syrian border.

The ingenuity of opiate smugglers is renowned. A famous instance of the smugglers’ artifice concerned opium from Hong Kong entering North America inside the horns of imported cattle. The beasts had their horns cut off, hollowed out and fitted with an inner screw thread. Packed with opium, the horns were then screwed back on to the animals. All went well until an astute customs agent spied one animal with its horn dangling downwards. Less exotic, hollowed out objects have been favoured for years: heels of boots and shoes, oranges and grapefruit, bars of soap, dolls and toys, plaster busts, fake antiquities, books, picture frames and even lengths of timber and grindstones. Any potential container is considered by the smuggler: bottles of medicine and toothpaste tubes in personal luggage, musical instruments (especially those with hollow sound boxes, like guitars), knobs of brass bedsteads, fountain pens, portable typewriters, shoulder pads, cameras, empty wrist-watch cases, photographic film cases marked do not open – the list is almost endless. Refrigerator casings, car panels and chassis members, railway carriage doors, spare tyres on commercial vehicles (and, in recent years, those actually on the road wheels), fuel tanks, barrels of tar, aircraft roof and wing cavities, bicycle frames and fire extinguishers have all been utilised.

On occasion, the smugglers resort not to hiding drugs but actually simply disguising them. Opium has been smuggled shaped like peanuts and inserted into ground-nut shells, made into candles, shaped as vehicle wheel-chocks and carved into objets d’art. In 1952, opium was being smuggled from Afghanistan and Pakistan into India inside walnut shells which had been emptied of their kernels, re-sealed and placed amongst ordinary walnuts, the authorities only becoming suspicious because the nuts were sent by parcel post rather than in bulk. Heroin, being an off-white or white powder, lends itself to overt smuggling. A Persian carpet importer smuggled heroin by liberally sprinkling it over suitably coloured carpets, which were then rolled up and shipped: the recipient hoovered them clean. Animal skins, to which white powder often clings as a residue of the preservative process, have also been similarly used. As an extension of the cow-horn scam, another instance concerned a Chinese woman carrying her pet cat and its recent litter of five new-born kittens who was arrested for smuggling opium. The pet cat was clean but the kittens had all been drowned, dried off, eviscerated, stuffed with opium and replaced alongside their mother. Kittens are not the only young creatures to be stuffed with heroin; there is the case of a dead human baby also being used, cradled by its erstwhile mother.

International courier services were, for a while, used by drug smugglers, but today this has largely stopped as companies refuse to accept packages from unknown customers unless these are open and able to be inspected. Ordinary postal services, however, are liable to abuse and have long been used by smugglers. The bulk of ordinary mailed parcels carried internationally makes comprehensive detection virtually impossible, despite modern technological methods to counteract arms smuggling and terrorism. Thousands of kilograms of heroin were smuggled out of Vietnam during the Vietnam War through the US Army Post Office; with half a million troops in the theatre of war, comprehensive parcel examination was impossible. Organised rings were established amongst troops who, in some instances, made vast profits from their trade. A particularly unsavoury side to this business was the smuggling of heroin inside body bags returning corpses home for burial: heroin was also smuggled back to the USA hidden in deep wounds in cadavers.

On numerous occasions, traffickers have used children with whom they have travelled, the latter sometimes carrying the contraband: in some instances, they have even used their own offspring. In 1989, in a case dubbed the ‘Heroin Baby Trial’, an Australian couple were sentenced to life imprisonment in Thailand after trying to smuggle 5.53 kilograms of heroin out of the country in a pillow in their year-old infant’s pram. The method of using children is based upon the knowledge that law enforcement agencies are reluctant to prosecute children because of their age, the complex laws governing minors, the difficulty of proving intent on the child’s part and the fact that many are ignorant of what they are doing.

Chemical trickery is also in the smugglers’ evasive arsenal. The plainest method is merely mixing a powdered drug, such as heroin or morphine, with another similar-looking powder. Morphine has been smuggled in rice and flour whilst heroin has been hidden in cosmetic powder or talc. Separation is a simple matter of dissolving and evaporation. This can, of course, go wrong. A Chinese smuggler was caught in 1947 through his own stupidity. He dissolved 125 grams of opium in boiling water then soaked a length of cloth in it and left it to dry – but forgot opium smells, especially when it is warm. He was arrested on a crowded bus and executed.

A particularly clever quasi-chemical technique was used in smuggling by sea. A lightweight sealed box containing drugs was tied to a bag of salt or sugar and dropped overboard. When the sugar or salt dissolved, the sealed box floated to the surface to be collected. A modern variation on this theme came to light in 1994. It involves a boat dropping a consignment overboard in a waterproof box, attached to weights, a buoy and a tracking device consisting of a transponder beacon and a receiver. The weights hold the consignment on the sea-bed. At a later date, which can be weeks ahead, a collection vessel arrives following the transponder and, by sending a signal to the receiver, triggers the release of the weights. The buoy carries the consignment to the surface to be picked up.

A major factor favouring smugglers is the high value of heroin in relation to its volume. A kilogram of pure heroin takes up little more room than an average book: after cutting, it can provide up to 200,000 doses. This makes the smuggling of small quantities economically feasible and allows drug syndicates to accept a degree of discovery. It is, from their point of view, better to spread their risk than to put all their eggs in one basket – and the odd arrest is to their advantage for it mollifies the authorities. Recently, heroin has been found being smuggled out of Hong Kong in postcards which have been carefully peeled into two halves, with a small amount of heroin being inserted and the card repasted.

With small quantities being viable, smugglers frequently hide heroin about their persons. Body packs are taped onto the torso or around the thighs: women enhance their busts with shaped packets inside their bras whilst men can appear as beer-gutted football supporters or well-padded fat cats. Two American women were arrested at Bangkok airport as they boarded a Seattle-bound flight in March 1992 with 3.5 kilograms of heroin strapped to their legs. ‘Pregnant’ women are sometimes podgy with body packs rather than a foetus: one smuggler was caught with tiny bags of heroin under his dentures, his slurred speech giving him away. Some resort to tailor-made undergarments fitted with pockets. As an extension to the powdered carpet trick, some passengers (particularly elderly ones) rub heroin into their grey hair and shampoo it out at their destination.

Heroin is also carried internally by two methods. First, the drug is placed into a sealed metal or heavy rubber container known colloquially as a ‘charger’, lubricated with Vaseline and pushed up the anus or vagina: such traffickers are known as ‘stuffers’. An example of the type is a British woman, Sandra Gregory, who was arrested in Bangkok in 1993 as she tried to board a plane to Tokyo with 142 grams of heroin concealed in her vagina. Second, it is put into tiny flexible rubber containers and swallowed: these smugglers are called ‘swallowers’. Condoms tied with dental floss or fishing line are ideal containers being easily swallowed, the smuggler easing them down smeared with syrup: on occasion, the lubricated surfaces suffice. The rubber is also highly elastic and less likely to fracture. Fingers cut from latex rubber gloves (usually of the surgical rather than kitchen variety) have been found, also tied with dental floss which is far more tensile than cotton, resists stomach acids and does not stretch when wet. At their destination, the smugglers either pull the chargers out or take a heavy dose of laxative.

All is well unless the smuggler is X-rayed. One of the earliest recorded cases of smuggling by ingestion dates to June 1945 and involved a Mrs Chowning who was taken at Laredo, Texas, en route from Mexico. Fluoroscopic examination revealed foreign objects in her stomach. She was dosed with laxative and excreted thirty-one packages of heroin. Since then, swallowers have increased the number of packages they ingest. The average is 70 to 80, but British customs have found 260 in one person: it may yet prove to be the world record.

If customs officials suspect a swallower, they apprehend and continuously observe them twenty-four hours a day – this is referred to as ‘baby-sitting’ – until the suspect defecates and passes the packages which are then collected. Frequent urine samples are also taken and, if drug urine levels start to rise, implying a package is leaking, the smuggler is instantly hospitalised and operated upon, a customs officer present at surgery to seize any removed evidence.

Things can go badly wrong for the smuggler without customs officials’ involvement. Amongst other occurrences, in February 1982, 42 condoms each containing 4 grams of heroin were obtained from the stomach and lower intestine of an American en route by air through Hong Kong. The haul was found during the autopsy. One condom had burst, bringing the carrier a particularly nasty death. Most ingested seizures range from 0.5 to 1.7 kilograms. More recently, in 1992, a Colombian woman was picked up in Bogotá as she was about to board a Miami-bound flight. It was discovered she had 752 grams of heroin, in 16 sealed plastic bags, surgically implanted into her buttocks.

Nowadays, airlines co-operate with law enforcement agencies, for a good number of individual smugglers fly long-haul. Cabin staff on flights in-bound to America are given cash incentives by US Customs for pointing out passengers who did not eat or drink: they might be swallowers. Some airlines note passengers who refuse food, too frequently visit the lavatory, seem deliberately not to sleep and who are uneasy in their seats for no apparent reason. On certain routes, specific nationalities are carefully observed: for example, Chinese and Thai nationals are watched in-bound to London, with West Africans outward-bound from Hong Kong where they are infamous as smugglers.

Smugglers often take roundabout routes to throw customs officials off their trail. They fly from a drug producing to a drug-free territory, stay a while and then fly onwards after re-ticketing, thus disguising their original point of departure. Some syndicates use relays of carriers to the same effect whilst flight-loading is also used whereby several carriers embark on the same flight: if one is stopped, the others may get through. A Filipino smuggling ring intercepted bringing heroin into the USA in 1970 had eight couriers on a single flight.

The most effective protection a trafficker can hold against detection is a diplomatic passport which affords total immunity from customs searches at air- and seaports. For decades it has been used, and remains, as a means of smuggling. At one time, in the 1960s, it was such a widespread method of avoiding detection that customs officers in both Europe and the USA wryly suggested the initials CD (meaning Corps Diplomatique) should stand for Contrebandier Distingué.

Examples of diplomatic traffickers are legion but several stand out because they were Ambassadors. Maurico Rosal (Guatemalan Ambassador to the Netherlands and Belgium), along with Salvador Pardo-Bolland (Mexican Ambassador to Bolivia), smuggled heroin worth at least $5 million between them, running it from Europe to the USA: Pardo-Bolland was successfully sentenced to eighteen years’ imprisonment in the USA. In 1971, the Laotian Prince Sopsaianna arrived in Paris to take up the post of Laotian Ambassador to France. As a result of a tip-off, his baggage was stopped and searched, one of his suitcases being found to contain 60 kilograms of heroin. The matter was covered up but the French government refused to recognise his diplomatic credentials and he returned to Laos.

Most modern heroin transhipment is done by containerised freight aboard ships, air freight cargo, vehicles, international mail parcels, concealment on commercial airline flights and light aircraft. The largest shipments go by cargo container, such as the seizure of 494 kilograms of South-east Asian heroin by US Customs near Oakland, California, in 1991. It originated in Thailand and was shipped via Taiwan, hidden in a consignment of plastic bags. Taiwan was used as a way-post to disguise the country of origin of the container by redocumentation. Another means of shipment is in torpedo-shaped containers bolted below the water-line onto the bilge-keels of large vessels. These are impossible to detect without examination by a diving team.

Recent statistics of heroin smuggling into Britain give an indication of the world-wide situation, although Britain, being close to continental Europe, receives a disproportionately high percentage by road. The figures are 33.9 per cent brought in by vehicle, 19.9 per cent by freight or cargo, 14.9 per cent in baggage, 3.9 per cent on person, 1.6 per cent concealed internally, and 25.8 per cent in other ways, including post, sea drops, diplomatic bag services and light aircraft.

The high volume of modern international trade and passenger movements makes the searching of every likely means of smuggling impossible. An example of the task may be seen in the small area covered by Hong Kong where, in an average year, customs authorities have to contend with over 52,000 ocean-going vessels, 250,000 smaller craft, 71,000 aircraft landings, 42 million travellers, 7 million vehicles and 11 million packages of cargo. Searching or even observing such a volume of traffic is beyond human abilities.

Despite the complex subterfuge needed to smuggle, traffickers have not and will not be put off. They accept some of their shipments will be intercepted and budget accordingly in the knowledge their profit margins are so high. And there are always people willing to act as mules. These may be petty criminals looking to make a career in the trade, international prostitutes obliged to carry for their pimps, tourists who think they can get away with it, global back-packers and hippies short of money for the next leg of their journey or, as is frequently the case, simply poor people in dire financial straits, hoping to raise some capital. In their need or greed, they forget the one traffickers’ maxim – mules are expendable: and they are now so plentiful they are often referred to as ants.

In the modern world of intercontinental trade and tourism, it is well nigh impossible to apprehend more than a small percentage of smugglers and dealers. Many factors other than the wiles of the traffickers gain relevance. Geographical location is an important element.

The USA has always had a huge problem, due to the length of its borders and seaboards which are impossible to police. Access is easy through the many settlements along the Mexican or Canadian borders, small ports on the West Coast or the Gulf of Mexico, so close to the Caribbean islands. The Mexican–USA border follows the Rio Grande for 1900 kilometres, most of which can be crossed. Expanses of desert allow light aircraft to fly below radar and land at disused airfields or even in the desert itself. Cargoes can be dropped undiscovered by parachute. Of the Canadian border, 5000 kilometres run through unpopulated wilderness. Add this to the millions of vehicles which cross the frontiers annually and the millions of passengers who arrive by scheduled airline, not to mention private aircraft and yachts, and the problem seems truly insurmountable.

Other countries face similar problems caused by the international nature of the drug trade. European countries are all land-linked, which helps smuggling, whilst the European Union’s removal of border controls further abets traffickers. Large itinerant populations of migrant workers provide a supply of mules whilst some countries, like the Netherlands, have so relaxed the enforcement of drug laws as to make a near mockery of international enforcement measures.

The smugglers, traffickers and mules are only the ‘front’ of the trade. Behind them stand the drug barons and their efficient organisations, many of which are internationally based. They might almost have learnt their trading methods from the East India Company, for many of them are modelled on commercial multi-national structures with world-wide contacts, political protection and vast financial resources. Their ingenuity is seemingly inexhaustible. Since the 1960s, they have accrued such wealth they can pay top dollar to employ the best lawyers, financiers and advisers, meet any bribe level and corrupt whomsoever they chose to protect them, from police officers to commissioners, civil servants to government ministers, magistrates to cardinals.

These organisations are frequently ethnically exclusive. For decades, the traffic in the USA was conducted by Italians. In France, the traders are Corsican, in Italy they are frequently Sicilian, in Germany they are Turkish and in Asia usually Chinese or Japanese. New groups are emerging all the time. Nigerians are now players, with the latest new boys on the opiate scene being Russians, Albanians and Romanians.

The strength of such ethnic bondings is powerful. Laws of silence are paramount, ethnic honour or pride firmly rooted. The groupings have specific codes of discipline which are ruthlessly enforced whilst there is collective protection for loyal members. From the law enforcement aspect, they are usually impossible to infiltrate, although the American authorities have successfully penetrated the American Mafia with spectacular results. However, despite ethnic ties, alliances between such groups have also become commonly accepted: with the international nature of the drugs trade, such co-operation between criminals is essential.

In the early stages of international control, the problem of the international gangs was underestimated and there was insufficient legislation to combat them. International police co-operation was also muddled and makeshift. However, in 1923, the International Police Commission, or Interpol, was set up with headquarters in Paris. Today it has 136 member countries and, although it targets all international crime, it is a strong tool in the fight against drugs with its massive database accessible to the world’s police forces.

Tip-offs and criminal contacts, stool-pigeons, narks and grasses were for years the drug squad officer’s main weapon and these are still important but the odds favour the trafficker who, often amongst the élite of the underworld, knows the terrain whilst the police work in the dark. Both police and drug organisations tap sources for information: gang rivals, addicts hungry for a fix and vengeful dealers are always ready to snitch to the police or anti-trafficking organisations. Enforcement agents buy information and may infiltrate local rings, posing as potential clients. It is dangerous work and may lead to the agent being murdered when found out. They have a reasonably good success rate but they catch only street pushers and perhaps the middlemen suppliers. The bosses escape the net.

The invention of the computer has considerably aided drug enforcement. An early example of the use of the microchip dates to the early 1970s when Chinese heroin gangs targeted the USA. Unsure of the trustworthiness of their American contacts, two couriers usually carried out each delivery, one a representative of the American buyers, the other a Chinese to keep an eye on him. Several arrests were made by feeding computers with aircraft passenger data, highlighting repeating patterns of two people, one an Asian, flying on the same aircraft to the same destination. At about the same time, American cross-border vehicle data also started to be collected to watch for patterns of travelling frequency.

In the last decade, airline ticketing computers have become immensely sophisticated. They can track a passenger across the world, note where and when he breaks his journey or omits a segment of the route. For example, a passenger might fly from London to Calcutta, then take a boat to Thailand, pick up some heroin, go by train to Kuala Lumpur and fly on to Los Angeles via Tokyo, changing airlines along the way. The computers will record this, noting he did not fly from India to Malaysia. Quite often, possible candidates for smuggling are stopped by airport customs officers who ask not to see inside their cases but their tickets and passport. A recent Thai visa stamp but no Thai ticket stub, for example, is cause for suspicion.

Airport customs offices maintain internationally accessible, computerised reference files of convicted or arrested criminals and released or suspected smugglers amongst other undesirables. The passenger lists of every in-bound aircraft are liable to scrutiny whilst the aircraft is en route, the data obtained from the airline computer network, customs officers especially targeting high-risk flights, usually those from or near source countries. Organised syndicates today bribe computer operators rather than police and customs officers whilst hackers can be employed to access computers to alter or erase crucial files.

Whilst old-fashioned detective work, sharp eyes, hunches and experience remain effective weapons, the enforcement agencies have other handy tools at their disposal. Dogs, trained to sniff out drugs, are used widely at border posts, in ports and airports, given a free rein to range over off-loaded baggage and cargo: their noses are acutely tuned to scent specific drugs. Furthermore, a dog cannot only find infinitesimally small traces of drugs but differentiate between it and all the other smells it comes across. This negates smugglers’ attempts to mask the scent of their drug by packing it with mothballs, onions, garlic powder, pepper, perfume or coffee. A dog may also be given the run of an aircraft cabin, sniffing the seats: if a seat proves positive, the information is radioed to the baggage hall, the passenger who occupied it identified through his boarding pass record or baggage tags and appropriate action taken.

Two classifications of dogs are generally used, the active and the passive. The former are usually eager, excitable breeds such as spaniels which are positioned in airline baggage sorting halls. They run all around and over the incoming luggage and, when they get a scent of narcotics, become excited, barking and furiously wagging their tales with glee. Passive dogs are from less volatile breeds such as Labradors and Setters. They wander the transit lounge or mingle with airline passengers at baggage carousels. When a scent is picked up from a passenger, the dog sits down next to them, briefly glancing up at their face: this is the signal to customs officers the passenger is carrying.

A US Customs sniffer dog called Snag had, up until 1993, made 118 drug seizures worth $810 million, the most any canine has discovered: he has his place in the Guinness Book of Records. Two other dogs, Rocky and Barco, made so many seizures along the Texas–Mexico border in 1988, the Mexican smugglers put a $30,000 price on their heads. The dogs held the rank of honorary Sergeant Major and were reported to wear their stripes on duty. In May 1995, an Irish sniffer dog named Jake, working at Rosslare – who has found £9 million worth of drugs – was kidnapped. He was found a few days later after an appeal to the public, locked in a shed where it was presumed he had been left to die by drug traffickers.

Military spin-off technology is also now used in the war against the smuggler. Sophisticated radio communications equipment and bugging or long-range listening devices all play their part. Aircraft fitted with electronic monitoring sensors, originally ready to lock on to enemy aircraft in the Cold War, now intercept light aircraft flying at zero altitude. Satellite logging and pinpointing find the same targets whilst earth resource satellites can identify areas under poppy cultivation, allowing them to be targeted for destruction. High-speed launches and combat helicopters are also on line.

Despite all this, it is still estimated 90 per cent of all drugs dispatched arrive safely at their destination. DEA statistics estimate as much as $200 billion worth of narcotics enters the USA annually, a sum equivalent to one-third of all national imports. In the fiscal year 1992—3, the US Customs and US Coast Guard, backed up by the US Navy, spent $1.1 billion intercepting drug smugglers. It is no shame to them, in the light of the business, they utterly failed.

Colonel Arthur Woods, one-time Police Commissioner for New York and the first police expert appointed as an assessor to the League of Nations Advisory Committee, stated in 1923, ‘… in the contest with law-breakers as rich, as powerful, as well organised, and as far-reaching as these, the police must act strongly … In the struggle between traffickers and police, the advantages still lie with the traffickers.’

His words are just as true today.