Correspondents' Correspondence Drug Dragnet
LAND, THOMAS
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Drug Dragnet Paris-Officials at the Ministry of the...
...Well-organized international arrangements have been established during the last few years-most notably, the pioneering Franco-American agreement of 1971-and air and sea ports are now being closely watched...
...But care was taken to explain what was going on to those being inconvenienced...
...Although the investigation lasted nearly five hours, the travelers, who had to wait in the hot southern European summer sun the entire time, were surprisingly tolerant...
...In addition, an official patiently explained: "Our goal is to stop the traffickers...
...Drug Dragnet Paris-Officials at the Ministry of the Interior here measure the scarcity of heroin on the local black market by the frequency of drug store robberies...
...And French pharmacists, who are understandably less than thrilled about their unsought role, have lately been demanding more effective protection from the police...
...The consequence of such efforts is that the price of drugs in France has skyrocketed...
...The thieves are addicts suffering withdrawal symptoms because heroin is not readily available on the streets, and they are desperately looking for supplies...
...Often they fail, and their failures can mean death...
...Leaflets had been handed out noting that limited sample searches had uncovered a total of 3,731 pounds of drugs during the past year in Marseilles alone...
...Drug store break-ins across the country are averaging two a day...
...So they have been robbing drug stores to feed their habits, and the pharmacists have been complaining to the police.-Thomas Land...
...Drugs threaten young people of all countries...
...Thus passengers aboard the Massaila, the car ferry operating between Marseilles and Casablanca, were subjected not long ago to an unusually tough vehicle-by-vehicle check involving more than 60 customs inspectors...
...It was a fine public illustration of collaboration between authorities of different countries, and it led to Mexico's replacing France as the principal supplier of illicit drugs to North America...
...In 1974, the trial of the leaders of a French-Corsican ring ended in heavy prison sentences for the convicted, and finally wiped out the notorious "French Connection...
...Lazare railway station in the center of Paris...
...in a single week recently, six burglaries took place in the Paris region alone...
...and if we are to stop them, we have got to be increasingly thorough...
...A dose of adulterated heroin costs 1,000 francs these days, compared to 50 francs just a year ago...
...Traffickers show increasing ingenuity...
...The reason for the new crime wave is the effectiveness of a police crackdown on the French drug trade...
...The smugglers were in the process of packing $4.5 million worth of heroin into rolled oil paintings in preparation for a trans-Atlantic flight...
...Between 1971-74, narcotics agents arrested more than 500 international operators, seized an estimated 4,400 pounds of hard drugs and destroyed five major clandestine laboratories...
...The heightened activity has unquestionably brought results...
...Normally what they find in the pharmacies are drugs in the form of derivatives, which they then try to reduce down to the pure product...
...And although hard drugs like "brown sugar," containing 33 per cent pure heroin, have begun appearing-arriving from Hong Kong via Amsterdam-few addicts can afford the price and must make do with whatever else they can find...
...Claude Olievenstein, Chief Physician of the Marmottan Medical Center of Paris, believes that about 30 of the young people who received treatment at his hospital probably died this way over the past 12 months...
...Similarly, a group of Canadians who attempted to fill the French Connection vacuum with their own operations, probably through Montreal, were arrested by agents of the French Central Narcotics Office in a daylight swoop near the St...
Vol. 58 • September 1975 • No. 18
