KALOVED IN REGISTRY No. 51
UV 1973
1JKK 19/3
AMERICANS
BUY HK
THE STAR
26/10/73
DRUGS
LLOYD
SECURITY boss Peter Lloyd said today top American traffickers were involved in Hongkong's drug trade.
But this did not mean Hongkong was an inter- national drug base, he said.
The traffickers only came here on an ad hoc basis when their normal supply routes were disrupted.
"There is evidence some top traffickers from the United States may have come here to buy drugs and take them home," Mr Lloyd told The STAR in an ex- clusive interview.
"But this has not been on an organised basis.
"I don't think it is a very large-scale export trade at the moment and we do not want it to become one.
Mr Lloyd said the traf fickers appeared to use Hongkong to make up tem- porary shortages and not as a major supply source.
"Presumably this is when
there is some hold-up in the usual pipeline through Marseilles," he said.
On the Hongkong market, Mr Lloyd said there were clear signs narcotics traf- ficking had been severely dis- rupted in recent months.
"One of the better in- dications is the price the addict must pay on the street," he said.
Supplics
"This has risen very sharp- ly recently and we have reason to believe this is because of a cut in supplies."
Mr Lloyd said the best and most educated estimates put the number of drug addicts in Hongkong at between 80,000 and 100,000..
His department would be going all out to cut the
domestic market in the con- ing months, he said, by continuing seizures here and abroad in co-operation with the United Nations.
Mr Lloyd said he saw curing addicts as one of the major ways to cut the drug trade.
"An aspect which is im- portant is finding ways of introducing methods of treat- ment on a mass scale," he said.
"Many people have suggested many different ways, but because of the scale of the problem here what we need is to find the means of treating very large numbers of people at a reasonable cost."
The preliminary results from the methadone substitu- tion scheme were en- couraging, he said, but it was too soon to say whether this was the solution.
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