NEWS: [The Advertiser] 6/5/03 Car Park Deal Leads to Arrest

Car park deal leads to arrest
By CHRISTOPHER SALTER
06may03
THE largest haul of amphetamine paste in South Australia was uncovered by police yesterday – by chance.

The discovery of $18.2 million worth of amphetamine was made when police patrols from Holden Hill, performing a routine check of the area's "hot spots", stumbled on a drug transaction in a Modbury car park.

Chief Inspector Brett Woollacott said officers saw three men transferring the amphetamines between two cars.

The drugs had been frozen and stored in 15 clear plastic bags, each containing about 1kg of amphetamine.

Inspector Woollacott said two men escaped while a third man, 35, was taken into custody for questioning.

Police later raided the man's house at Salisbury East and charged him with taking part in the production of a drug of dependence.

He was also charged with possessing an unregistered firearm after police found a handgun at the house.

The man will appear in Holden Hill Magistrates Court tomorrow.

Inspector Woollacott said the seized amphetamine paste – which is about 80 per cent pure – would have been mixed with other products to create about 365,000 "street doses" valued at $18.2 million.

The discovery comes as senior police say amphetamine use in SA has risen to alarming levels. SA has the cheapest amphetamines in Australia.



I saw this on the local news last night. The paste in the plastic bags was a dark red. Ox Blood maybe?

each bag was a slightly different colour, ranging from dark red (ox blood)
to the more common yellow/brown, a few were almost white....
all of them so mouth watering (homer drooling noise)
so much gear, what a waste!
but then, what kind of idiot does a deal that big in public8)

I agree, very silly to be doing millions of dollars worth of business in a public car park.

Especially if it is a known "hotspot"!

LOL I wouldn't do a deal in a carpark that was going to take longer than 15 seconds...... As if you would transfer 15 bags between 2 cars in the open and as mentioned in a hot spot of all places. The IQ of drug dealers these days is rapidly declining.

Insert breakdown of media methematics here ;D

15kg broken down into 365,000 'street doses' leaves 0.4 points gross weight each maybe... with a purity of 80% leaves your street dose weighing in with about 1/3 point of meth.

$18.2mil over 365,000 doses is $50 bucks a pop... I dunno about any of you but I'd rather eat sudafed than pay 50 smackers for a third of a point of meth.

BigTrancer

Yeah, and then the article says SA has the cheapest amphetamines in Australia. 8) Couldn't quite work that one out.

I always thought the street value was how much money, was trading hands until it got to the user.
eg. 1/4 of an ounce of mull, bought for $90, then they sell 7grams at $20 each = $140.
So all up the street price of that 1/4 of an ounce is $230!!
Am i right? or totally wrong?

Anyway, what dickheads, doing such a huge transaction in a public car park, dealers are so dumb!!

But yeah meth is cheap in SA. I was over there in March last year. Could pick up meth that easy, it wasn't funny, and it was cheaper than here in Victoria.
And hardly anyone had pills, I couldn't find any for the whole 15days, but everyone who took drugs said they could get me meth!!!!

How do people clearly that dumb manage to get themselves involved with something that could make them so much money?

And how could someone else be so dumb as to entrust these to idiots with all that stash in the first place?

Considering the volatile nature of the manufacturing process, if the intelligence of these two is anything to go by, I reckon there will be a few Darwin Award contenders.

BigTrancer said:

Insert breakdown of media methematics here ;D

15kg broken down into 365,000 'street doses' leaves 0.4 points gross weight each maybe... with a purity of 80% leaves your street dose weighing in with about 1/3 point of meth.

$18.2mil over 365,000 doses is $50 bucks a pop... I dunno about any of you but I'd rather eat sudafed than pay 50 smackers for a third of a point of meth.

BigTrancer

Click to expand...

LOL. You gotta love the figures the media gives to the public.

Like the last pill seizure, they valued each pill at $60!

Pfft I wouldn't pay that if the pills contained 300mg of pure MDMA... wait a sec... yeh I would...

Note they said AMPHETAMINE.

Based on the purity of this "paste" i am inclined to believe that the cops and journalists got it right.
Methamphetamine is far more sinister anyway; and if thats what they had found, it surely would be said for greater shock value.

There is amphetamine being made in Australia; i myself have seen court evidence from forensic labs to that effect.
The process to making amphetamine, would be decidedly more difficult than the classic and generally dirty pseudo --> meth route. But it can also be done on a significant scale with the right chemicals (and INDUSTRIAL not pharmaceutical, chemicals at that) - and lets be frank, 15kg is significant.

Hence it does not surprise me that the chemist who is making amphetamine, and a LOT of it, got product of 80% purity. I doubt traditional meth routes would get close to 80%; even "ice" as in meth, is only around 90%. Amphetamine salts from memory absorb far more water than methamphetamine, and i would assume would be more paste like after much handling.
Of course meth could appear similar if sufficient water and solvents were not removed, but 20% is not much room for this plus other impurities.

I doubt whether these idiots were involved in the manufacture either.

IMO look for amphetamine production to possibly increase as pseudoephedrine becomes increasingly impossible to get, and with all the focus on meth, perhaps people will look to other chemicals which can be used for regular amphetamine.
Also with massive quantities of "ice" as in meth, coming from SE Asia, manufacturers here may find it increasingly difficult to compete using their rather pathetic forms of meth compared with this mighty substance. So investing in a less risky substance, with different and often preferred effects to high quality crystal meth, may seem advantageous.

I naturally could be wrong, but the way it has been described throughout as amphetamine, the reference to a paste, and the purity of 80% leads me otherwise.

I allways thought that "meth"amphetamine was also and amphetamine, as was "MDM"amphetamine and "MD"amphetamine and PM"amphetamine etc etc. Couldnt it just be vague press talk that labled it AN amphetamine. Hence either meth or straight amphetamine.

Biscuit: I believe you about amphetamine production here in australia, just pointing out a generalisation the press may have made

I completely agree with you; but imo lately the press and police have used the specific term METHamphetamine far more; in fact in almost all recent cases of seizures and court convictions.

You are right that all of those substances are amphetamines; and thats the others term they gets flung around: amphetamineS. i.e: the plural.
If they had said that, i would agree with you; in that when amphetamines is said it is said in the collectively, or when they may not have even identified the exact type of amphetamine.

But here amphetamine, and amphetamine ONLY, was used throughout, including the phrase "amphetamine paste".

Thats why i believe what i said; but as u rightly stated, i could be completely wrong.