SOMETIMES THE GOOD GUYS DO WIN, EVEN WITH DRUGS

Heroin Is On The Wane And Police Drug Strategies Are Working.

Last weekend AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty delivered some of the best news
on drugs for a decade, that AFP tactics were beginning to show results,
with lower volumes of heroin and falling overdose rates.

It is too early yet to see if the fall is just a short term phenomenon or a
marketing ploy by pushers and dealers. If sustained, though, it represents
a shift in the illicit drugs industry, that has hardly taken a backward
step in decades. It would be a triumph for Australia's national police agency.

Heroin can be beaten. So can the drug traffickers who pour drugs into
Australia and anywhere else they can. They exploit every opportunity to
sidestep the law. But have we found their measure at last? Will prohibition
drive them out of business?

The same syndicates that traffick in drugs deal in other human
exploitation, carrying refugees and laundering money obtained through crime.

It reveals clearly the potential of the strategies used by the AFP to win
over regional nations across the Asia-Pacific, where individual agents give
Australia its eyes and ears.

They are in 12 regional countries, including Hanoi, Burma, Jakarta and
Kuala Lumpur and one will be in Pnom Penh from July.

Putting this regional intelligence network into place has been a tough job
for the AFP since these sovereign nations could just as easily refuse.

The relationship works both ways, and the AFP provides local police with
training, equipment and intelligence sharing. In return, the AFP has eyes
and ears on the ground, and is establishing relationships with law
enforcement bodies and political leaders.

The strategy is one part of a AFP's global approach to crime: it has 33
officers based in 22 countries in its overseas liaison network. As many as
150 more police work under the United Nations banner on peacekeeping
missions or they belong to the network of mobile strike teams aiming to
disrupt international criminal enterprises.

Criminal syndicates have operated in the Asia-Pacific with relative ease
and they have substantial influence, power and resources.

Many countries are aware of the regional strongholds for drug barons and
their drug distribution networks. Burma is part of the jigsaw puzzle. It is
the world's second largest opium producer after Afghanistan, responsible
for 80 per cent of the opium in South East Asia.

It has common borders with Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and China, a large and
largely lawless and inhospitable area known as the Golden Triangle.

In these areas, local drug lords and their private armies battle each other
for opium supplies, where there are few government agencies strong enough
to control them.

There are large hinterlands where peasant farmers grow opium poppies as a
form of subsistence agriculture.

One tactic from Western nations has been to provide alternative crops to
the farmers to wean them away from opium poppies. This has had several
outcomes. One is that some of the farmers who adopted coffee then used the
crops as a precursor supplement to produce a rough form of amphetamines,
containing 66 per cent caffeine.

Another is for local drug syndicates to turn to amphetamines instead of
heroin because they can be made cheaply anywhere. They don't need the
farmers and they don't need to fight anyone for the raw materials.

This process has been bubbling away for several years. The outcome is that
amphetamines and the range of designer drugs, including the party drug
ecstasy, have become very large commodities in many parts of Asia,
increasingly supplanting heroin as the drug of choice.

World-wide seizures of amphetamines are at record levels, and East and
South-East Asia is credited with 40 per cent of the production, according
to the Australian Illicit Drug Report.

In 1998, the greatest amount seized was in Thailand, but Europe is still a
key centre for its manufacture, trafficking and consumption.

The trends are well recognised by governments in the region, and possibly
accounts for their willingness to cooperate and seek support from
Australian authorities. Mr Keelty points to an enormous heroin bust last
year in Fiji as the turning point. In September and October, the AFP led a
multi-national force of police in Fiji, where they seized 357kg of heroin.
This seizure was more than Australian authorities had seized in a recent
two-year period.

Apart from being a disaster for the drug syndicate concerned, it sent a
message to all regional syndicates, a message that has evidently had an
impact. Traffickers prefer to store big caches of drugs in nearby
countries, where law enforcement is far less experienced in recognising and
handling drugs.

It is relatively easy for a syndicate to penetrate Pacific rim countries
and hide large dumps of heroin. The next step in their strategy is to
drip-feed heroin into Australia a kilogram or two at a time. It's safer for
them.

Since then, heroin availability in Australia has dried up. We are seeing
evidence of dramatic falls in heroin overdose rates from around 80 to
around 10 or 15 in the capital cities. More than 700 people died from
heroin overdoses in Australia last year.

The change is being felt in Canberra, too, where heroin overdoses have
begun less common than six months ago.

Unfortunately, drugs like amphetamines or cocaine are being made available
in their place.

Cabramatta has two emerging trends: an expansion of the cocaine market and
the advent of "speedballing", mixing heroin and cocaine. Record seizures of
cocaine is another unwanted trend for Australian authorities to deal with.
An agent is already stationed in Columbia, the world's biggest cocaine
supplying country.

Mr Keelty, who was appointed only in April, is no stranger to this aspect
of the AFP's role, and he affirms how important these footholds in Pacific
region countries are for Australia.

What is also clear is that sometimes the good guys do win. The Australian
Government has been narrow at times in its approaches to issues like drugs,
although we all share the same concerns about the outcomes.

It was a Howard Government strategy in 1997 that launched bold new measures
to combat the slick drug syndicates and their wide involvement in criminal
enterprises. The AFP had been under a cloud itself because of funding
lapses and because it was going through a restructure that had ripped the
heart out of some parts of the AFP, leaving morale at a low ebb.

Money was made available for the AFP to set up 10 specially trained mobile
strike teams, know as Operation Avian .

This was done in stages and now involves 133 agents and specialists, who
are based in our major cities. The long term aim is to target major crime
figures, reduce the supply of drugs and disrupt criminal operations.

Mr Keelty says there is no mystery to the drying up of heroin supplies, and
the wariness of the drug bosses to smuggle large shipments to Australia.

The mobile strike teams have had a quantifiable impact on drug traffickers
and major underworld figures are now behind bars. A large part of this
success is due to the cooperation of the AFP's law enforcement partners in
Australia and overseas.

Mr Keelty said he does not refer to the struggle with drug traffickers as a
"war on drugs".

He is right. He says drugs affects mums and dads and kids in the home. "It
is too real for that."