Stephen Lunn | The Australian | 24 September 2011
A KILOGRAM of cocaine bought wholesale in Colombia will set a drug dealer back $US2438 ($2446). In Mexico it will cost $US12,000; across the border in the US, $US32,000.
In Australia a kilo of cocaine wholesales for $US191,000. As Australian Crime Commission boss John Lawler says, the return on investment for illegally importing cocaine is extraordinary, particularly given a new class of user is emerging here.
"We're seeing a marked change in the market for cocaine from those typical of its use in the 80s and 90s, the well-educated middle class to lower socioeconomic status users who are more likely to be injecting cocaine," Lawler says.
He believes Mexican and Colombian crime gangs, which to date haven't pushed too deeply into Australia because of the lack of a local network, will be looking to cash in on the higher prices given the increase in demand in recent years.
"There is increasing collaboration between organised criminals involved in large-scale drug supply, Chinese with Mexican with outlaw motorcycle gangs," he says. "There is no concern about ethnic purity in these drug gangs; it's all about making the most money in the shortest possible time.
"Here in Australia there are already signs of increased Mexican infiltration, and if they get more of a foothold here, then watch out."
Earlier this month a shipment of ride-on lawnmowers from Brazil was used as cover in an unsuccessful attempt to smuggle 271kg of cocaine, with an estimated street value of $200 million, into Australia.
A growing domestic cocaine market is just one of several trends that have emerged since the turn of the century, trends that will help authorities develop strategies for drug prevention in coming years. Some of the trends tell a positive story, experts say, with use of the legal drugs in particular, cigarettes and alcohol, in serious decline.
Showing posts with label Cocaine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cocaine. Show all posts
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Score, Chop, Snort: Sydney's cocaine blizzard
Joel Meares | SMH | 26 October 2011
Once the choice of inner-city hipsters and the city’s wealthy elite, cocaine is now almost as easy to buy in Parramatta and Penrith as it is in Paddington. Joel Meares looks at the blizzard enveloping Sydney and the price users are paying – to both their bank balance and their health – for their indulgence.
Mike* called them “freaky Fridays”, those regular ends to a busy week when he and his mate would “get on it” at work.
His friend might roll in at nine, twitchy after a big night and still armed with a healthy bag of cocaine, and the pair would set to work chopping it up, setting it out and sucking it up their noses.
They’d do their job, and do it well, and pause for a cheeky beer at lunch to calm the buzz.
When work finished, it was almost always back to the pub and on to a coke-fuelled bender that wouldn’t end until Mike’s head hit the pillow on Sunday night.
Such a blitz is pretty standard stuff at the pointy end of town, where the cogs of power and money that keep the city running thrive on little dashes of white powder. But 27-year-old Mike is not a suit; he’s a car detailer.
His pillow does not rest on a bed in Elizabeth Bay but in a modest home near Liverpool. An occasional cocaine user, Mike says the drug helps him work. “You’re there rubbing down, you’re working hard labour. You have some coke and if it’s good, you’re boosted for at least an hour. You’re charging.”
In a frank conversation about his habits, Mike says he buys his coke from friends, his nose is his best quality tester — “If it stinks, it’s going to give you a good buzz” — and that he prefers to sniff his stash at home. “It’s pretty dirty when you have to do it in a bathroom,” he says. Not even at Ivy? “Ugh,” he grunts, after a long, sober Monday at work. “Too many heroes.”
When rumours of coke dealer Richard Buttrose’s “little black book” emerged after his arrest in early 2009, it wasn’t the likes of Mike who had the press all a-twitter.
Headlines homed in on whispers of a “well-known fashion designer”, an MP and the usual lawyers, bankers and entertainers often linked with the glamour drug; the same set that eastern suburbs-based Buttrose nodded to when he told a court that among his “circle of friends” taking cocaine “was much like having a glass of wine”.
Use of cocaine up 55 per cent
But as the city’s coke lust has grown — with use in NSW climbing steadily since 2003 and jumping 55 per cent between 2008 and 2010 — cocaine has become everybody’s drug. Like our cockroaches, the drug is everywhere, if mostly unseen, as much at home in Buttrose’s blue Benz as in the paint-flecked pocket of the bloke detailing your car. And the consequences of this ubiquity – on our bodies and our borders – are just starting to be seen.
There’s certainly plenty to go around. The most objective measures of use — the number of cocaine overdoses and arrests for possession — are rising.
The past few years have seen more overdoses than ever in NSW and in 2010 there were 688 records of possession compared with 549 the year before and just 182 back in 2000. All this is happening as the use of other “party drugs”, such as methamphetamine and ecstasy, declines.
“In the beginning, I was willing to believe it might have been increased law enforcement but more and more data [is] coming to suggest that there is an increase in consumption,” Don Weatherburn, the director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, said last year.
Nick Bingham, head of the NSW Police drug squad, says these numbers don’t take into account the many users who fly under the radar.
“There is a hidden and more affluent group that you just don’t see, we won’t come into contact with, and therefore we’re not detecting,” he says. “They do it in the privacy of their own home and though we can’t count them, we’re sure that their numbers are significant.”
Once the choice of inner-city hipsters and the city’s wealthy elite, cocaine is now almost as easy to buy in Parramatta and Penrith as it is in Paddington. Joel Meares looks at the blizzard enveloping Sydney and the price users are paying – to both their bank balance and their health – for their indulgence.
Mike* called them “freaky Fridays”, those regular ends to a busy week when he and his mate would “get on it” at work.
His friend might roll in at nine, twitchy after a big night and still armed with a healthy bag of cocaine, and the pair would set to work chopping it up, setting it out and sucking it up their noses.
They’d do their job, and do it well, and pause for a cheeky beer at lunch to calm the buzz.
When work finished, it was almost always back to the pub and on to a coke-fuelled bender that wouldn’t end until Mike’s head hit the pillow on Sunday night.
Such a blitz is pretty standard stuff at the pointy end of town, where the cogs of power and money that keep the city running thrive on little dashes of white powder. But 27-year-old Mike is not a suit; he’s a car detailer.
His pillow does not rest on a bed in Elizabeth Bay but in a modest home near Liverpool. An occasional cocaine user, Mike says the drug helps him work. “You’re there rubbing down, you’re working hard labour. You have some coke and if it’s good, you’re boosted for at least an hour. You’re charging.”
In a frank conversation about his habits, Mike says he buys his coke from friends, his nose is his best quality tester — “If it stinks, it’s going to give you a good buzz” — and that he prefers to sniff his stash at home. “It’s pretty dirty when you have to do it in a bathroom,” he says. Not even at Ivy? “Ugh,” he grunts, after a long, sober Monday at work. “Too many heroes.”
When rumours of coke dealer Richard Buttrose’s “little black book” emerged after his arrest in early 2009, it wasn’t the likes of Mike who had the press all a-twitter.
Headlines homed in on whispers of a “well-known fashion designer”, an MP and the usual lawyers, bankers and entertainers often linked with the glamour drug; the same set that eastern suburbs-based Buttrose nodded to when he told a court that among his “circle of friends” taking cocaine “was much like having a glass of wine”.
Use of cocaine up 55 per cent
But as the city’s coke lust has grown — with use in NSW climbing steadily since 2003 and jumping 55 per cent between 2008 and 2010 — cocaine has become everybody’s drug. Like our cockroaches, the drug is everywhere, if mostly unseen, as much at home in Buttrose’s blue Benz as in the paint-flecked pocket of the bloke detailing your car. And the consequences of this ubiquity – on our bodies and our borders – are just starting to be seen.
There’s certainly plenty to go around. The most objective measures of use — the number of cocaine overdoses and arrests for possession — are rising.
The past few years have seen more overdoses than ever in NSW and in 2010 there were 688 records of possession compared with 549 the year before and just 182 back in 2000. All this is happening as the use of other “party drugs”, such as methamphetamine and ecstasy, declines.
“In the beginning, I was willing to believe it might have been increased law enforcement but more and more data [is] coming to suggest that there is an increase in consumption,” Don Weatherburn, the director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, said last year.
Nick Bingham, head of the NSW Police drug squad, says these numbers don’t take into account the many users who fly under the radar.
“There is a hidden and more affluent group that you just don’t see, we won’t come into contact with, and therefore we’re not detecting,” he says. “They do it in the privacy of their own home and though we can’t count them, we’re sure that their numbers are significant.”
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