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future be working with the Thai police units in a supportive role, rather than seeking to make their own cases. He confirmed that the trawler traffic had declined,
one of the most encouraging although there had been some evidence of a resurgence features was that the Thai were starting to develop their own information on the trawler fleets. If more money could be made available in the Thai budget for narcotics suppression, particularly for the marine police, the development of this information co:ld be exploited. A week or so before our meeting, an attempt had been made to run drugs by trawler to Hong Kong. The response to this had been significant, co-operation being developed between the marine police, air patrols, and the South Vietnamese Navy, with Hong Kong being ready to respond if other defences failed. In the event, the South Vietnamese Navy had made the arrest, and some two tons of opium had been seized. On alternative routes to Hong Kong, he reported a significant seizure made in Bangkok of 38 kilos of morphine base packed in egg crates in a warehouse; the fim concerned had been making between 20 and 40 shipments of goods by air to Hong kong each week. Outside Thailand, the Burmese had been much more active in suppressing opium caravans, and they seemed to have recognised that they had a role to play i dealing with this inte national problem, since it appeared to be affecting their own youth; the UN would shortly be going in with a crop substitution programme.
10.
The points raised in the presentations were fully discussed, and the opportunity was taken to follow up the points made in the discussions in Hong Kong last year. The following were the most significant:-
(i) Scientific aids in the detection of heroin laboratories
Rolph reported that their laboratory seizures for the year had been done by classic police methods and not by the use of sophisticated scientific techniques; however, in his view, there was still a need for such techniques to be developed. The DEA said that so far as they were conce ned the work on mass spectrometry and on developing a "sniffer" was still very much in the experimental stage, and that to some extent they were concentrating their efforts on perfecting the type of equipment that ordinary policemen or agents on the beat find useful for surveillance and for other more routine operational purposes, viz., pocket transmitters and alarm systems. I reported the progress that we had made in considering Hong Kong's request for development of equipment for long-range detection of heroin laboratories and that the matter was under active consideration. It was agreed that it would be desirable to maintain co-operation between us and UK scientists who were active in this field. this context I referred to the work of the Home Office Scientific Aids Working Group, and Belk reported some work that they had done on the US heroin market with reference to domestic heroin availability and the chemical signatures of foreign sources of heroin, This seems very much on the lines of sore of the work that we have done in the UK on target drugs'. Eelk made available to me a copy of the document that had been produced, and I ar sending this (the only one I have) for information to CRE.
(ii) Training
In
Rolph said that Hong Kong was very willing to give assistance with the training of specialist narcotics officers in the region. and it was agreed that the Hong Kong experience, in particular in using dogs and of surveillance techniques, was of value. In a general discussion about training, the consensus was that the emphasis should be upon developing a cadre of officers to do training locally, rather than on bringing officers into a foreign environment and giving them instruction which was unlikely to be relevant to their own experience. UN involvement in training was referred to and it was agreed that this point might reasonably be drawn to their attention, particularly as the report of the UN Ad Hoc Committee for the Far East the Ad Hoc Committee had laid stress upon the need for more training. Reference was also made to the desirability of
3.