DRUG SELLERS GO ONLINE TO PEDDLE WARES

DRUG dealers have turned to the Internet to peddle their wares, Britain's
anti-drugs chief Keith Hellawell said on Friday.

He said an estimated 1,100 Web sites were offering drugs ranging from
cannabis to heroin, and urged nations to band together to stamp out the
illicit E-commerce.

Some 25 of the Web sites are based in Britain.

"It is a difficult problem," Mr Hellawell told BBC Radio. "We're trying to
get more countries to co-operate together so that if we do clearly identify
sites where these drugs are being transmitted from, the particular host
country will actually act."

"From a customs point of view we are seizing some of these packages when we
do identify them. But it isn't easy and let me not pretend that it is."

Potential buyers simply have to log-on to an Internet site, give credit card
details and just wait for drugs to arrive.

While cannabis is the mainstay of Internet drug sales, hard drugs like
ecstasy, cocaine and heroin are also available across the Net, customs
officials said.

No estimates on the worth of drugs coming into Britain via Internet
mail-order were immediately available, but officials said Switzerland and
Holland were two key origins of Web sites.

"(The Internet) opens up the markets and it gives the person who is ordering
a product a wider range and indeed probably a world-wide market to choose
from," said Stuart Crookshank of Customs and Excise's anti-smuggling arm.

The hunt for the dealers is complicated by the fact that they can close down
a Web site to cover their tracks and simply start up another.

While buying drugs over the Internet may take the danger out of having to go
and find them on the street, purchasing them via mail order also brings
potentially severe penalties.

Those successfully prosecuted for ordering and effectively importing a
package of cannabis face anything up to 14 years in jail, while hard drugs
carry a potential life sentence.