Burmese Drugs Flood Australia

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Far Eastern Economic Review
September 9, 1999, pp. 26

Australia Counts Cost

by Bertil Lintner

Australia has emerged as a major destination for Burmese narcotics.
Australian police say a plentiful supply of heroin has led to a dramatic
rise in overdose deaths among the nation's estimated 45,000 addicts.  They
say as many as 1,000 people could die this year from heroin overdoses --
40% more than in 1998.  Now amphetimines from Burma are also reaching
Australia.

The volume of the drug traffic was made apparent last October, when
Australian authorities seized 400 kilograms of pure heroin off the
northern coast of New South Wales.  The record haul, almost three times
the amount of heroin seized in all of Australia in 1997, had an estimated
street value of A$400 million (US$255 million).  Australian Federal Police
sources say the drugs originated in the Burmese area of the Golden
Triangle.

Police say rising production of heroin in northern Burma has led to a
decline in wholesale and street prices in Australia.  The lower prices, in
turn, have led many dealers to stop diluting their heroin, creating a much
purer and deadlier product.  A kilogram of pure heroin now costs less than
A$100,000 in Australia, down from A$200,000 just five years ago.  On the
streets of Cabramatta, a Sydney suburb that is now the hub of the drug
trade on Australia's east coast, a 20-milligram capsule of heroin costs
between A$15 and A$20, down from A$30 last year.

Exactly how much heroin is available in Australia isn't known.  But the
limited impact on heroin prices after the October seizure unnerved
narcotics experts.  "We expected a shortage in the streets of Cabramatta,
and therefore an increase in the price of heroin," says Lisa Maher, a
criminologist at the University of New South Wales and an expert on the
drug trade.  "But it had no impact at all.  Prices remained the same.
There's just so much of it around."

Recently, Australian police made their first seizure of amphetimines from
Burma.  Details of the consignment remain sketchy, but a senior Australian
Federal Police officer says it consisted of the small, round "yaa baa"
pills that are flooding into northern Thailand from Burma.

Given the vast sums of money the drug trade generates and a profusion of
smuggling routes, Australian narcotics officials say they fear Thai
government efforts to stem the flow of drugs out of Burma may have little
effect.

END