Overseas gangs ride high on Australia’s drugs wave
OVERSEAS-based bikies and Calabrian Mafioso are prominent among the organised crime gangs currently flooding Australia with ecstasy.
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OVERSEAS-based bikies and Calabrian Mafioso are prominent among the organised crime gangs currently flooding Australia with ecstasy.
They have singled out Australia because we are the world’s biggest users of ecstasy per head of population — and are prepared to pay way over the odds for their pills.
Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission national manager Richard Grant yesterday warned Australia would continue to be organised crime’s country of choice to smuggle illegal drugs too as long as demand stayed high.
“Why are they picking Australia? It’s simply because in the global market we are paying a premium for these illicit drugs,” he told the Herald Sun.
“Why would you send it to some country that you are getting say $5 a pill when you can send it to Australia and get $20?”
Two of the world’s biggest ecstasy busts have been in Melbourne and both shipments were organised by the Calabrian mafia, with bikies among those lined up to distribute the millions of pills.
Federal police seized 1.2 tonnes of ecstasy hidden in ceramic tiles shipped to Australia from Italy in 2005, in what at the time was the world’s biggest ecstasy bust.
A new record was established in 2007 when police in Melbourne seized 4.4 tonnes of ecstasy pills hidden in tomato tins shipped from Italy.
Mr Grant, who previously managed Victoria Police’s organised crime squad, said there had also been significant seizures of ecstasy, cocaine, ice and other drugs in Australia in the past 12 months.
“Notwithstanding those significant seizures, we don’t see any change in price, availability or quality,” he said.
“So that would indicate there is a significant demand and there’s clearly an amount of those sorts of drugs being warehoused.
“We are seeing a whole lot of different groups — whether it’s outlaw motorcycle gangs, Italian mafia, or various other organised crime gangs — that operate offshore.
“The intelligence that we have would indicate that 70 per cent of our major targets impacting on Australia in terms of organised crime are actually offshore.”
ECSTASY FACTS:
*Contains the drug methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA).
*Most of world’s MDMA is produced in Netherlands and Belgium.
*Some ecstasy doesn’t contain MDMA, but is made up of speed and other stimulant drugs mimicking its effects.
* Nicknames include XTC, X, Adam, M & M, eccy, E, go, scooby snacks, hug, eckies, pingers, bickies, flippers and Molly.
* Adverse effects include dehydration, heat stroke, hallucinations, irrational behaviour, paranoia, fitting, racing heartbeat, kidney and other organ failure.
* MDMA has caused death simply because many users take it at dance parties. It gives users more energy, resulting in hours of frenetic dancing, making them extremely thirsty.
-Sydney teenager Anna Wood drank so much water her kidneys couldn’t cope, causing her brain to swell until it killed her in 1995.
-Georgina Bartter died in November 2014 after taking ecstasy at the Harbourlife music festival. She collapsed in a convulsing heap on the dance floor and later died in hospital after suffering multiple organ failure.