NEWS: SMH - 16/03/08 'Afghan brown heroin hits Sydney streets'

Afghan brown heroin hits Sydney streets
John Kidman
March 16, 2008

A poppy field in Afghanistan.

BROWN heroin from the opium fields of Afghanistan has made its way onto Sydney's streets for the first time.

The director of Sydney's Medically Supervised Injecting Centre Dr Ingrid van Beek said some use of brown heroin had been seen at the centre sporadically over the past nine months.

Inner-city heroin overdoses are also on the rise, with about one a day coming into the emergency department at St Vincent's Hospital. Experts are unclear why overdoses have increased.

Dr van Beek said there was sometimes confusion between acidic impure white heroin, which appeared brown in colour, and genuine Afghan heroin. But she said the limited demand for acidifiers to use with the drug indicated it was brown heroin.

Dr van Beek said the presence of Afghan heroin in Australia did not mean it was likely to "flood" the local market - the Australian market is simply too small and too far from the Middle East. And its arrival has not been linked to any surge in use, following a seven-year "drought" in which the common Asian strain of the deadly narcotic was superseded by ice.

The Medically Supervised Injecting Centre reports heroin use among its clients is generally at an all-time low. However, inner-city heroin overdoses are inexplicably on the rise, says Dr Gordian Fulde from St Vincent's Hospital's emergency department.

"Whereas we were seeing virtually none up until 18 months ago, we are now receiving about one overdose a day," Dr Fulde said. "It's not an 'Oh my God, it's the end of the world'-type thing at this stage. It's early days and the numbers are still small. I can't give you a trail of how or where or why but it's happening and it's not going away."

The spike is not matched in Sydney's south-west, where overdoses in and around Cabramatta were once common but are now "virtually unseen", said Liverpool Hospital's emergency director, Dr Richard Cracknell.

Australia-wide, the price of heroin is reportedly falling while customs and police seizures rose 30 per cent between 2006 and last year.

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Taliban's lifeblood, in mail from Kabul
March 21, 2008

Brown heroin from Afghanistan is starting to fill a drug void on Sydney streets, write Jordan Baker and Ash Sweeting.

IN an Aladdin's Cave of confiscated narcotics in Kabul, among hollow samurai swords, car parts and fake almonds stuffed with drugs, lie two envelopes. Both had been bound for Sydney.

Each contained a marketable quantity - 10 grams - of brown heroin, a colour that distinguishes west Asian production, and a size that reflects, say drug experts, a growing trend towards importing small amounts of heroin to avoid detection.

What the people who intended to pick those packages up from newsagency postboxes in Leichhardt and Westmead might not have appreciated is that by ordering Afghan heroin, they were financing the Taliban's battle against Australian forces.

Heroin production in Afghanistan is booming as the Taliban raises money to pay for its insurgency, and there are fears the heroin is making its way to Sydney, filling the void created when Asian production fell and the heroin drought began almost a decade ago.

Afghan police will soon burn the tonne of heroin, tonne of opiates and five tonnes of hash amassed in the Kabul drug storehouse. The Herald understands an Afghan man has been arrested over the Sydney-bound envelopes.

Customs intercepted about 400 packages of heroin in the post last financial year. A woman who used to work for the newsagency administering the Leichhardt postbox said she was often approached by federal and state police about suspicious packages, which had been used to smuggle drugs or fake documents.

"The police would come and watch the postboxes or inspect the mail," she said.

Traditionally, most of Sydney's heroin has been white powder from South-East Asia. But in recent years its use among injecting drug users has dropped because of scarcity, high prices and poor quality. Crime rates fell as a result.

Brown heroin tends to come from further north, where Afghanistan is by far the biggest producer. A survey of regular injecting drug users in Sydney last year found that one in three heroin users had used brown powder. Associate Professor Louisa Degenhardt, from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of NSW, said the prospect of Afghan heroin growing in popularity was worrying.

If quality improved and prices fell, the use of heroin would increase. "I don't think that in any time in the near future production will increase in South-East Asia," she said. "It's South-West Asia that's going to be the important production area.

"We'd welcome some more work on whether or not this is Afghan heroin, and whether or not it will see a return of supply. If there's demand for a drug, and the only thing stopping use is the poor supply, you have to be worried if supply increases."

The drug was used differently, and had to be "cooked up", she said. "There's implications for health and vein care," she said.

A federal police spokeswoman said: "While Australia's main source of heroin has traditionally been the Golden Triangle, we are aware that Afghanistan has been the source for some heroin detected coming into Australia."

Many heroin importations are on a small scale. Customs made 396 cargo and postal seizures of heroin last financial year, up from 192 in 2004-05 and 300 in 2005-06. Seizures from air passengers and crew rose from 27 to 43 over the same period. No figures were provided on where the heroin was coming from. A customs spokeswoman said all international mail was screened.

Police consider 10 grams - the amount in the Kabul envelopes - a marketable quantity of drugs, which can carry a penalty of up to 25 years in prison. People who smuggle drugs internally carry a similar amount, they say.

Professor Degenhardt said small-scale smuggling was becoming more popular. "There has been a move towards smaller shipments - people have been concealing it on themselves, or concealing it in the mail rather than the big shipments."

Federal police refused to comment on whether they were investigating the Kabul envelopes, but said Australian federal agents worked in advisory roles with the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan.

Garry Maunder, the manager of Keep Me Posted, which installs and owns the newsagency postboxes, said it was up to the newsagent to check identification, such as driver's licences. "I don't see the people or see the mail," he said.

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OND43X said:

i dont think it is the first time that brown afgan heroin has been on sydney streets. i can remember when i was in my early teens seeing ppl sell brown heroin in the mid 90s. im pretty sure that it started comming in the mid - late 80s with the fall of N.smith and the rise of L.Bayer

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