April 15, 1998

By Clare Garner

Record amounts of heroin were seized by Customs last year, reflecting the increasingly widespread availability of the drug on Britain's streets, it was revealed yesterday.

A total of 1,747kg of heroin was seized in 1997, a tonne more than the previous year. Police estimate the haul has a street value of more than £145m and is the equivalent of 9 million "wraps". A wrap represents between one and four hits and is being sold on the streets for the same price as a pint of beer.

At a press conference yesterday at which the annual Customs & Excise figures were announced, Keith Hellawell, the Government's "drugs tsar", said heroin dealers were getting youngsters hooked by selling the drug at a loss and suggesting they smoke rather than inject it. Some young people take the view that it is "all right" to smoke drugs, but "stupid" to inject, he said.

"It becomes more attractive to the young user when the pusher says 'I'm not going to sell you stuff that gives you Aids; have this stuff to smoke, it gives you better hits and better highs than the other stuff [cannabis]'."

Mr Hellawell spoke of "an erosion of resistance" towards softer drugs among the young. "Once you get a generation believing that illegal substances - and some legal substances - are attractive and that it doesn't matter, they naturally will go and try something else. Youngsters are discounting cannabis. Campaigns that are saying it ought to be legalised, that more people are doing it, mean they just discount it. There's a sort of machoism - and whatever the equivalent word for girls is - where they say, 'I'm going to go for it, I'm not going to play with this stuff [cannabis]'."
(Ed. note: This is really sleazy. A consistent feature of prohibitionism is to blame its critics for its failures.)

About 80 per cent of the heroin seized comes via theBalkans. The heroin is produced from opium grown in Afghanistan and Pakistan and is then transported in cars, vans, coaches and lorries from Istanbul through Bulgaria, Romania, into Austria and Germany, through the Benelux countries, and into Britain.

Dick Kellaway, Customs' national investigation service chief, highlighted Customs officers' successes, including the discovery of more than 200kg of heroin under the carpets of two speedboats, and the detection of 450kg in a consignment of bathrobes. But he called for more co-operation between drug enforcement agencies across the world.

"The Turkish authorities have given us some assistance in tackling the problem, but more remains to be done ... [British] Customs takes pride in having made a significant contribution to tackling a global problem, a problem which can only be approached by countries working together. We earnestly hope that at a time when the UK has presidency of the European Union, there will be further improvements in judicial co-operation to allow even more effective joint effort."