AT THE culmination of five weeks of drug law enforcement operations, the Australian Federal Police yesterday boasted that 14.6 tonnes of drugs worth $3 billion had been kept off the streets.
Yet in the same announcement, the Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, conceded strong demand for party drugs would need to abate before the drug trade would be substantially dented.
Mr Keelty yesterday showed off the results of the latest operation - 662 kilograms of pseudoephedrine discovered by customs officials in 45 boxes of fruit juice imported from Thailand.
Four Sydney men, aged 21, 28, 29 and 30, appeared in a Sydney court yesterday after they were arrested in raids across western Sydney, including at Arndell Park, Illawong, Castle Hill, Dural, Oakhurst, St Marys, Blacktown and Wetherill Park.
Two were charged with importing a commercial quantity of pseudoephedrine, and three were charged with supplying a prohibited drug greater than a commercial quantity.
The seized pseudoephedrine was capable of producing up to a tonne of ice, worth a street value of $50 million, Mr Keelty said.
The boxes of fruit juice were discovered inside a container of various food items, including instant noodles and rice, said Michael Carmody, the chief executive of the Australian Customs Service. Customs had targeted the container for surveillance after receiving intelligence from police. Officials replaced the pseudoephedrine with an inert substance and continued to monitor the shipment, resulting in Thursday's arrests.
During the five-week period 38 people were charged, Mr Keelty said.
Last week the police announced the world's largest ecstasy seizure, in which 4.4 tonnes of ecstasy was impounded in Melbourne, with 23 people were charged over the haul. "There's a whole network of suppliers and purchasers that sits underneath [the importers]," Mr Keelty said. "What we are trying to do is shut it off at the top end."
However, while the seizures were substantial, Mr Keelty conceded strong demand for party drugs would continue fuelling and financing the drug trade.
"It would appear our market here in Australia is prepared to pay a premium price for this sort of narcotic," he said. "What we have to do is to treat demand as much as we … deal with supply."
The impact of the drug hauls at street level was difficult to assess, said Alison Ritter, director of the drug police modelling program at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre
"The problem in evaluating the impact is we don't know how much else is getting through - we don't know if the criminal network had four other ships - and we don't know about how much has been stockpiled."
The size of the recent seizures indicated police were targeting "the higher end" of the syndicates, although there was a lack of data about the total size of the drug trade, she said.
Don Weatherburn, director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, said the seizures were impressive, but it was possible to overstate the impact on drug syndicates.
"Because police state the street value, people think importers have taken a substantial hit, but the importers haven't paid street prices, they've paid substantially less than retail value."
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