COFFEE POT: DRUGS ON THE MENU AT FIVE CITY CAFES

STAFF in five cafes are openly dealing in drugs in the Kings Cross
cafe strip, flouting the law as a national drug summit opens in Sydney
today. A Daily Telegraphinvestigation has found the outlets include
two new cafes where customers can buy cannabis as easily as coffee.

The establishments are just 200m from the site of the State
Government's proposed heroin injecting room and about 100m from the
Kings Cross police station.

Frustrated police, who make about one drug-related arrest in the area
each day, have moved to use new laws aimed at closing unauthorised
brothels as a way of stemming the area's drug trade.

On the eve of the Australian Drug Summit 2000, four days of
observation by The Daily Telegraph has found:

Drug sales inside the Piccolo Bar, Cafe Amsterdam and the Cafe Elysee.
The staff of two new businesses - Cafe 7 and the Bliss House Cafe -
also sell cannabis.

One staff member at the Bliss House boasted to a Daily Telegraph
reporter that sales in the cafe will gross $1 million in its first
year of trading.

The Daily Telegraph watched customers hand cash to staff members and,
in exchange, receive plastic bags holding green leaf.

Customers of each cafe have told The Daily Telegraph they believed
they were buying marijuana and allowed The Daily Telegraphto
photograph their purchases of bags containing cannabis head.

The Kings Cross police drug unit is aware that drugs are still sold
inside several Roslyn St cafes.

"The Piccolo (Piccolo Bar), Elysses and The Amsterdam, they are
obviously cafes frequented by backpackers and tourists who feel quite
comfortable smoking cannabis there," the unit's head Sgt John Maricic
said.

"[Cannabis] is still a prohibited drug and people are committing a
crime by using it, but obviously heroin and powdered drugs, like
cocaine, are our priority."

Sgt Maricic said that in the past two years his drug unit had arrested
436 people charged with 1013 offences such as drug supply, armed
robberies and break and enters, and seized $2.3 million in cash.

Sgt Maricic said police were now looking at other ways to stop drug
dealing from inside the cafes. "We are going to look at the disorderly
houses legislation," he said.

"It's an ongoing problem and with the Olympics coming up we want to
make the area as safe as possible."

Last July, Police Commissioner Peter Ryan asked the NSW Supreme Court
to have Cafe Amsterdam declared a "disorderly house".

But the case has stalled as the Crown Solicitor waits on evidence from
police.

The Daily Telegraph watched drug dealing inside the five
cafes.

At the Bliss House Cafe, in Ward Ave, just off Roslyn St, barely one
cup of coffee an hour was made and over a two-hour period last week,
The Daily Telegraph observed 19 people walk past the little-used
espresso machine and ascend a spiral staircase to a dark loft, each
leaving within one minute.

There, The Daily Telegraph watched two customers ask for "smoke" and
buy small bags of marijuana from a man who keeps his stash of the drug
inside his beanie.

A police spokesman said was suspected of drug offences, and Bliss
House Cafe was suspected of being used for both cannabis and heroin
dealing.