TNAG-0416-FCO40-462-Review-of-narcotics-problem-in-Hong-Kong-1973 — Page 36

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will arrange for the sale of the opium in parcels of 500 to 2,000 taels (40 to 160 lbs) either to the operatives of a group of divans, or to individual opium divan operators, deliveries being made by the importer's couriers. The raw opium is then converted into prepared opium by cooking following which it is ready for sale at street level in opium divans and the like.

8.

The sale and distribution of morphine base is also handled by brokers acting on behalf of the importer, but usually different brokers to the ones who deal in opium. The morphine base will either first be converted into heroin by the importer in a make- shift laboratory operated by a chemist skilled in the art and then sold to wholesale distributors, or it will be sold to wholesalers first who will arrange with a chemist themselves to refine it into heroin. From the wholesalers the heroin will be sold to syndicates which will arrange for it to be adulterated by the addition of barbitone or base powders in most instances following which it will be prepared in small packets ready for distribution and peddling on the streets.

9.

Thus is completed the whole cycle from the tribesmen who grow the opium in 'The Golden Triangle' to the addicts who consume the end products in Hong Kong. It is a business estimated to have a turnover in the Colony of not less than HK$1 million per day from which the profits being reaped all along the line are exceedingly high. The security of the import, storage, manufacturing and distribution arrangements are very tight indeed with plenty of money available to buy silence and to corrupt the weak and greedy. 'Cut outs are employed at every level making it virtually impossible to link the major organisers and financiers of the trade, who themselves are never in physical contact with the drugs, with any particular consignment.

Export of Heroin from Hong Kong

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10.

Unfortunately the narcotics trade in Hong Kong does not end with the consumption of the imported drugs by local addicts. There is evidence to show that a portion of the product of the Colony's heroin laboratories is being exported to the United Kingdom, America, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. This illicit traffic appears to be of an irregular nature and not conducted on a large scale at present, although this is not a matter which can be assessed accurately or in its entirety. It is handled by brokers who specialise in overseas export in conjunction with Caucasian and Chinese traffickers resident in, or with business connections in foreign countries. Although this trade seems to be limited at the moment, should the Turkish Government succeed in enforcing its ban on the growing of the opium poppy in Turkey after 1972 which could curtail severely the heroin output of the European laboratories for the lucrative American market, it is very possible that Hong Kong could become a major heroin producer and exporter to fill the void. The Colony is well placed astride international air and shipping routes to fulfil this unwelcome and undesirable role with easy access to almost unlimited supplies of the raw materials from Burma and Thailand.

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