IN SPITE OF ALL THE WARNINGS, STILL A BITTER PILL

IN THE Godfather, Don Corleone wisely knew which offers he could
refuse. When another family proposes cutting the Corleones in on its
narcotic interests, he declines, saying with respect, "I have a lot of
friends in politics.

But they wouldn't be so friendly if they knew my business was drugs
instead of gambling ... Drugs, that's a dirty business ... It doesn't
make any difference to me what a man does for a living, you
understand, it's just that your business is a little dangerous."

A little danger, it seems, is now big business.

Just as dirty, but with the potential to earn far more than barrels of
olive oil or, indeed, tins of tomatoes.

Today The Age reveals details of operations by the Australian Federal
Police that led to yesterday's early-morning raids and at least 21
arrests in four states, including nine in Victoria.

The raids were triggered by the seizure by customs officers of 4.4
tonnes of ecstasy with a street value of $440 million, found packed in
more than 3000 tomato tins imported from Italy in a shipping container
that arrived in Melbourne in June last year.

This astonishing haul, called the world's biggest ecstasy bust, is
impressive in statistical weight but depressing in terms of what it
says about putative supply and demand -- let alone the fact that
police and drug policy experts say such big hauls should have
negligible effects on ease-of-purchase or price of the drug.
Yesterday's operation has also been linked with the importation of 150
kilograms of cocaine seized by customs last month.

Among the properties raided yesterday were four in the Riverina town
of Griffith, NSW, whose owners have alleged links to the Calabrian
Mafia -- the family-based N'drangheta, or "the honoured society". Such
associations are not exactly new. Almost 30 years ago, the Royal
Commission on Drug Trafficking was established after the disappearance
of Donald Mackay, a Griffith furniture maker and anti-drugs
campaigner, in 1977. In 1979, the commission, under the late Justice
Philip Woodward, determined that a Griffith-based organisation --
"comprised almost exclusively of persons of Calabrian descent ...
engaged in the illicit cultivation, trafficking and distribution of
cannabis" -- was responsible for Mackay's murder. Justice Woodward
urged authorities to not allow "the curtain to fall upon the
activities of the organisation in Griffith".

That curtain, alas, was allowed to descend.

Its rapid re-ascent now reveals, it seems, more of the same play, with
no change of scenery and a perhaps modified cast of players; but its
script has been expanded to take in ecstasy and a greatly increased
public demand that can see the drug's basic worth per tablet of 75
cents fetch a street value of $50.

While it is almost inconceivable that the warnings of a royal
commissioner have gone so unheeded for so long, what is just as bad is
that subsequent, more contemporary alerts have also appeared to have
been disregarded. For example, in 2006, the former chairman of the
National Crime Authority, John Broome, said state and federal police
resources were shifting away from organised crime. "There is
absolutely no doubt that drug trafficking in Australia still causes
far more damage to far more Australians than all the terrorist acts
that have been contemplated -- let alone carried out -- in Australia
in the last 10 years," Mr Broome said.

Two years earlier, the NSW Crime Commission's annual report, referring
to "Italo-Australian organised crime", noted that this network "has
received relatively little law enforcement attention over the past
decade, yet continues to generate substantial wealth". Despite such
expert warnings, which also include key findings from Italian
anti-drugs investigators that Australia is part of an international
Calabrian crime network, the spirit of N'drangheta appears to have
been flourishing in the Riverina relatively unencumbered until this
week.

The AFP has, of course, justifiable reason to be pleased with the
results of its operations. Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty, in
describing this as "another success story in a long line of recent
achievements in tackling both domestic and transnational crime", omits
the back-story: how such organised crime, identified a whole
generation ago, has been allowed to mature to the point where even a
record drug bust will make little difference to a market described by
an expert today as "resistant to seizures". In truth, something should
have been done long ago to bring such maverick and threatening
syndicates under proper supervision and control.