kingpin007
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Dealers' dirty work in plain view
Matthew Fynes-Clinton
June 15, 2009 12:00am
EVERY weekend after 5am, when the last patrons stumble from southeast Queensland's nightclubs, staff are faced with a disturbing clean-up.
Press-seal bags - used to carry ecstasy tablets and other illicit drugs - litter secluded corners and the cavities beneath bar ledges.
Sometimes the empty packets have been dropped openly in the central floor areas. The bathroom cubicles are awash with them.
Most of the bags are no more than a few square centimetres. But a larger variety, clouded with residue from methamphetamine (speed) powder or dozens of street pills, are often found wedged behind toilet cisterns.
They are a sure sign that dealers have been brazenly plying their trade.
In Brisbane's Fortitude Valley and on the Gold Coast, nightclubs typically dispose of between 50 and 100 plastic pouches following a Friday or Saturday night.
This boom in street pills is partly due to the non-licensing of tablet presses streaming into Australia's illicit drug industry from overseas.
As reported in The Courier-Mail on Saturday, Coalition and Labor federal governments have refused to apply import controls on the machines - despite almost four years of urging by the Australian Crime Commission and other independent consultants.
A relatively small tablet press, bought over the internet for $2000 from China or Taiwan, is capable of generating 6000 ecstasy pills an hour.
But the problems have become even graver due to tightened regulation of precursor chemicals and the undiminished drive for profit.
The free-market presses have turned to rolling out an inferior, increasingly dangerous product.
Street-level ecstasy (MDMA) purity is at an all-time low.
Pills, falsely sold as ecstasy and meant to mimic its effects, may contain adulterants including methamphetamine, the veterinary anaesthetic ketamine, LSD, morphine, steroids, caffeine and a range of prescription sedatives and anti-depressants.
Australian Federal Police have identified heroin and rat poison in tablets destined for the club scene.
One clubber has told The Courier-Mail of a "high-quality MDMA drought" and a subsequent "flood of bad pills hitting the market, especially in Brisbane".
At their biannual meeting in Perth on Friday, the nation's police ministers are expected to appeal to new Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor for tough import restrictions on tablet presses.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,27574,25634362-3102,00.html