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X.As NOwO-e for November 1952-6 THE PROBLEM OF NARCOTICS. It 4s a weli-known fact, though statistics are lagging, that in all the free world, but more especinily in the Dollar areas the trede in narcotics has increased in a very large measure. Old traders find supplies much easier to get, shortages rarely occur for them, and in many instances the prohibitive prices of the past have been lowered in such a manner, that while they are still extre mely high, they nevertheless have reached a price level in which many of them - especially the derivates of Opium, Morphium and Heroin - are within the reach of entirely new classes, such ag Students and lower middle class elements. This sudden inerease in the supplies, this increasing improvement. in the way of distribution and in the financing of the black market in Narcotics, has awakened interest not only in the official Asenecies which are supposed to sombat this threat, but also in the Intelligence Services of the free nations. It has been obvious for a certain time, that besides the old well-known private rings of Narcotics, which have been operating for many decades with varying success, and which have been loging slowly and steadily ground in the face of rising international vontrol, a new and more powerfully sinister force has taken hand, It 1s today no more a secret to Intelligence Men, th,t the renewed threat of Narcotics against the health and economy of the free countries 4s vastly greater than at any time in the past - despite the fact thet the new organization is still only at the beginning of its operetiongs. In order to understand what is going on, there must be a little report on past facts. Narcotics come from three clases of products : Opium, Coea lesf/ and Hemp. Opium, from which is made Yorphium and Heroin is grown primefily in the USSR, China, and then ín all of South East Acie, India, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Argentina, Coca Leaf, from which Coeain {is made, is mostly erom in Bolivia; Peru and Columbia. There is finally the Indian H.mp, from which come Hasheesh and Marijuana, The denger of the Nareotics to international health have calied for world action since a longtime. The first Conference for World Action was called already im 1909 in Shanghai. Since then eight such Conventions were madé and at present the United Nations Gommssion on Narcotic Drugs, of which the Central Commission for the Surveyance of the T ade in Opium in Geneva is the most important part, is working on a Ninth International agreement in the hope to meet the threat. For the present operations in the fight against Narcotics the most important International agreements are the GeLY.
