particularly morphine and heroin and I have very much in mind the Far Eastern and Hong Kong situation. We feel that you might have a considerable interest in this particularly but not exclusively for the detection of heroin.
I do not wish to put too much weight upon what has been achieved so far. As I have said, this is a technique whose principle has been demonstrated experimentally, and to some limited extent in practice, but it will need to be developed to see if it can be used operationally (there may well be limitations which at this stage we do not perceive); and I think that co-operation between our people and yours could be of value in testing the technique to see if it is exploitable as soon as possible.
Such co-operation seems to me to develop naturally and appropriately from the co-operation which we have been developing in our talks in Hong Kong and Washington and also from the scientific conference in Paris last autumn.
The question arises of how best to proceed. We would suggest that as we have the equipment, such as it is, here, if you are interested you might care to arrange for John Gunn and/or a colleague to come over to Aldermaston to see the principle demonstrated. Possibly by then, the Police Scientific Development Branch, who will be taking on a further study of this,will have developed it further. Incidentally, if you are prepared to send somebody over that would be an admirable opportunity for him to meet the scientist who will head up the new Drugs Intelligence Section at the Central Research Establishment at Aldermaston; this will be the Central Scientific Intelligence Laboratory fulfilling the recommenda- tions of the Working Group on Scientific Aids to which I have already referred. Paragraphs 4-15 of the report which I sent to George Belk developed the arguments for such a laboratory facility, and it will, I believe, be a counterpart of that which is run by Stan Sobell. We feel that the establishment of a good working liaison between your laboratory and ours could be of great value to both sides.
As there
I shall be glad to hear from you whether you find these ideas attractive. is a possible commercial potential in the technique which I have described, I should be grateful if you would treat it as "commercial in-confidence".
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Yours sincerely
C J Train
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