Pubdate: Mon, 25 Feb 2002
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2002 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Nick Hopkins, The Guardian
Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n325/a09.html
Cited: http://www.drugscope.org.uk/ DrugScope

ANTI-DRUGS TEAMS 'USED WRONG TACTICS'

Agencies Plan To Chase Profits Rather Than Powder

A confidential assessment of heroin trafficking into Britain has concluded 
that the country's law enforcement agencies are in the dark about 60% of 
the trade and have been pursuing the wrong strategy for catching drugs 
lords for the past 20 years, the Guardian has learned.

The intelligence services have identified 25 people who they believe are 
big heroin traffickers, but accept that these men, only half of whom live 
in the country, represent the 40% of the industry that they know about.

The assessment has been circulated to members of the concerted inter-agency 
drugs action group, which is made up of the security services, the national 
crime squad, customs and excise and the police.

In what is a radical shift in strategy backed by the Cabinet Office, law 
enforcement agencies have adopted a new approach to the problem that puts 
greater emphasis on chasing "profits rather than powder", and identifies 
"choke points" along the traffickers' traditional supply routes.

Covert surveillance of suspect bureaux de change is one technique that is 
being used because of mounting evidence that the drugs gangs have been 
laundering huge amounts of cash rather than shifting sums through different 
bank accounts.

The agencies now accept that the previous strategy - which focused on 
individuals and efforts to seize heroin shipments as they came into the 
country - was flawed. "You can arrest more people every year, you can seize 
more powder, but that's not going to change anything," said the law 
enforcement source.

"We've had to come at this from a much wider angle. The [law enforcement 
community] has accepted that we have to take an economic approach."

Compiling the list of the top 25 known drugs traffickers reinforced the 
view that the police and customs "were just not looking in the right places".

Half of the traffickers are not resident in Britain; they are foreign 
nationals living abroad. The trafficking groups are not based on a "hive" 
system, as previously thought. They are much more loosely arranged and are 
more collaborative. The old concept that the trade is run by a number of 
James Bond-style villains has proved to be wholly incorrect, the source 
admitted.

The huge replanting of the poppy crop in Afghanistan has intensified fears 
that traffickers will try to shift large amounts of heroin into the country 
over the next 12 months.

A ban on poppy growing introduced by the Taliban in July 2000 led to a 90% 
drop in heroin production in Afghanistan, which produces 75% of the world's 
supply. But stockpiles of the drug meant that a steady flow was reaching 
street dealers in Britain, although this supply is now thought to be drying up.

Roger Howard, chief executive of the charity DrugScope, said: "The 
production of heroin in far away places should not be our only concern. The 
fact is that while the demand from rich countries remains, poor people in 
poor countries, who aren't offered viable alternatives, will meet that 
demand whether in Afghanistan, Columbia, Myanmar [Burma] or elsewhere.

"It is no use scapegoating other countries for the drugs problem while 
failing to address the demand for drugs here that creates the need for 
production in the first place."
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