Drug Smuggling

Illegal drugs can touch the lives of everyone. You might be affected directly if you have a friend or a family member who is a drug user, or indirectly through having to live with the threat of drug-related crime. Experts estimate the worldwide illegal drugs trade is worth as much as the individual oil, gas or world tourism industries. Whatever the true figure, the UK alone spends more than one billion pounds tackling the problem. Our Government is fighting back with a national anti-drugs strategy - Tackling Drugs To Build A Better Britain - in which HM Customs and Excise plays a key role.

It pulls together a host of anti-drugs initiatives set up to:

• help young people resist drug misuse and achieve their full potential
• protect our communities from drug related anti-social and criminal behaviour
• enable people with drug problems to overcome them and live healthy and crime-free lives
• stifle the availability of illegal drugs on our streets

Customs and Excise is channelling considerable anti-smuggling expertise into achieving this last goal. Working with other agencies such as the police, National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad, customs are committed to:

• reducing the supply of illegal drugs
• dismantling the criminal gangs that traffic drugs
• helping colleagues around the world tackle illegal drug production and distribution
• depriving traffickers of their assets and proceeds of crime

Drug culture
UK law classifies some types of drugs as 'controlled' substances, which means it is illegal to import or export them, possess them, possess them with an intention to supply them to others, or actually supply them without a licence. These drugs are split into three categories - class A, B and C - according to the threat they pose to a person's health and to society as a whole:

• Class A drugs include those which are widely abused, such as heroin, cocaine and Ecstasy
• Class B drugs include cannabis and amphetamine
• Class C drugs include anabolic steroids and temazepam

The most harmful drugs are heroin and cocaine, which are the top but not the sole priority of the national drugs strategy.

Overseas threat
Illegal drug manufacture of heroin and cocaine is almost unheard of in the UK. Most of the drugs taken by British users come from thousands of miles away on different continents. They are shipped into our country by sophisticated chains of international criminals. For instance, the majority of heroin sold in the UK started life as opium poppies in south west Asia, in countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is processed and moved to Turkey, before being shuttled to Britain through Europe.

Cocaine is similar. Its origins are more likely to be in South America. A great deal is routed through the Caribbean, stockpiled in Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium and the Netherlands before making it into the hands of British dealers.

The Low Countries of Belgium and the Netherlands also tend to be prime sources of synthetic drugs, such as Ecstasy and amphetamine, although production appears to be on the rise in the UK, too.

The main source country for cannabis tends to be Morocco.

Smugglers and their techniques
Traffickers try a huge variety of scams to get past Customs officers. Who routinely seize drugs that have been:

• swallowed or stuffed into a body cavity
• hidden on a person
• packed into someone's luggage or belongings
• stashed in a car, boat or aeroplane
  
• hidden in seemingly legitimate freight