DRUGS IN COFFEE PACKETS

Find Poses Threat To Industry, Says CIC

THE impact of the illicit drug marijuana was serious on the coffee
industry, according to a Coffee Industry Corporation officer.

Acting chief executive officer Mewie Launa said if marijuana lured
people away from their coffee gardens, coffee production was sure to
decline.

If that happened, the CIC would not achieve its aim of producing and
exporting 2 million bags of coffee annually.

Mr Launa envisaged a gloomy future for the coffee industry if
marijuana gradually gained influence ahead of agricultural cash crops
like coffee, tea and spices.

Mr Launa said he was deeply concerned that people were being lured to
the easy money that marijuana brought as compared to the toil and
labor involved in coffee.

He pledged CIC would help police where possible so that cultivation
and trade of marijuana were minimised and discouraged. Coffee accounts
for 75 per cent of Papua New Guinea's agricultural export earnings and
if marijuana was to threaten the industry, Mr Launa predicted that
coffee's annual income of half a billion kina would be
jeopardised.

Meanwhile, the CIC is conducting its own investigation into a roaster
coffee exporter in Goroka after police intercepted six men with 16kg
of high grade marijuana vacuum packed in coffee labelled packets. The
CIC's investigation aims to find out if the vacuum packing was done at
one of the two roasting factories in Goroka and whether the storage of
the plastic bags was not prone to theft.

CIC chief executive Badira Vari said police were also carrying out
their own investigations.

He said the packing of marijuana in coffee packets was a criminal
matter and police had the prerogative to pursue and institute criminal
charges on offenders.

However, since the packaging involved coffee labels, CIC needed to
conduct its own investigation to find out if a licensed exporter of
roaster ground coffee had anything to do with the packing of marijuana.