ANTI-DRUGS TEAMS 'USED WRONG TACTICS'

Agencies Plan To Chase Profits Rather Than Powder

A confidential assessment of heroin trafficking into Britain has concluded
that the country's law enforcement agencies are in the dark about 60% of
the trade and have been pursuing the wrong strategy for catching drugs
lords for the past 20 years, the Guardian has learned.

The intelligence services have identified 25 people who they believe are
big heroin traffickers, but accept that these men, only half of whom live
in the country, represent the 40% of the industry that they know about.

The assessment has been circulated to members of the concerted inter-agency
drugs action group, which is made up of the security services, the national
crime squad, customs and excise and the police.

In what is a radical shift in strategy backed by the Cabinet Office, law
enforcement agencies have adopted a new approach to the problem that puts
greater emphasis on chasing "profits rather than powder", and identifies
"choke points" along the traffickers' traditional supply routes.

Covert surveillance of suspect bureaux de change is one technique that is
being used because of mounting evidence that the drugs gangs have been
laundering huge amounts of cash rather than shifting sums through different
bank accounts.

The agencies now accept that the previous strategy - which focused on
individuals and efforts to seize heroin shipments as they came into the
country - was flawed. "You can arrest more people every year, you can seize
more powder, but that's not going to change anything," said the law
enforcement source.

"We've had to come at this from a much wider angle. The [law enforcement
community] has accepted that we have to take an economic approach."

Compiling the list of the top 25 known drugs traffickers reinforced the
view that the police and customs "were just not looking in the right places".

Half of the traffickers are not resident in Britain; they are foreign
nationals living abroad. The trafficking groups are not based on a "hive"
system, as previously thought. They are much more loosely arranged and are
more collaborative. The old concept that the trade is run by a number of
James Bond-style villains has proved to be wholly incorrect, the source
admitted.

The huge replanting of the poppy crop in Afghanistan has intensified fears
that traffickers will try to shift large amounts of heroin into the country
over the next 12 months.

A ban on poppy growing introduced by the Taliban in July 2000 led to a 90%
drop in heroin production in Afghanistan, which produces 75% of the world's
supply. But stockpiles of the drug meant that a steady flow was reaching
street dealers in Britain, although this supply is now thought to be drying up.

Roger Howard, chief executive of the charity DrugScope, said: "The
production of heroin in far away places should not be our only concern. The
fact is that while the demand from rich countries remains, poor people in
poor countries, who aren't offered viable alternatives, will meet that
demand whether in Afghanistan, Columbia, Myanmar [Burma] or elsewhere.

"It is no use scapegoating other countries for the drugs problem while
failing to address the demand for drugs here that creates the need for
production in the first place."