January 18, 2003 6:32 AM

Too bad there's no health plan

A new blend: Cotton, rayon and heroin. Smugglers slip drug-soaked clothes through ports.

Do you like innovation? Does cutting-edge technology leaving you feeling an excitement almost bordering on sexual? Does coming up with creative solutions to complex problems give you a warm, fuzzy feeling? Are you excited by proving the doubters wrong? Do you live to achieve your goals no matter what the odds against you may be? If this is true of you, and you also want to make a ton of money while you're at it, there's a career path you really ought to look into: drug smuggling.

Federal authorities in New Jersey say a stealthy new technique for smuggling drugs into the country is on the rise and is flooding the metropolitan area with a half-billion dollars worth of high-quality heroin each year.

According to investigators, increasingly large quantities of drugs have been slipping past inspectors, concealed in seemingly ordinary clothing -- only these clothes have been specially prepared and impregnated with liquid heroin that can be extracted once the clothes arrive in the United States.


"They're killing us," said one federal law enforcement official who expressed alarm over the situation.

A court document prepared by the U.S. Customs Service last year said, "In the past several months, Customs officials throughout the country have made numerous arrests of individuals who were attempting to smuggle heroin soaked in clothing into the country."

Tom Manifase, assistant special agent in charge of investigations for the U.S. Customs Service in New Jersey, said almost half of all heroin seized by authorities at the Newark ports of entry last year was concealed in drug-infused clothing, usually packed in suitcases rather than worn by the smugglers.

During the same period, he said, tens of millions of dollars worth of the drug has been detected in clothes by inspectors at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and almost twice as much has been brought in through other locations nationally.

Regardless of the point of entry, investigators say, most, if not all, of the drug was destined for delivery to the New York metropolitan area.

During an undercover investigation, a court-ordered wiretap recorded one smuggling suspect boasting that the extracted drugs were "100 percent pure" and "strong enough to knock down an elephant."

It truly is amazing the lengths that smugglers will go to get their products into the hands of their customers. Just imagine where we would be if Microsoft were HALF this innovative...the mind boggles at the possibilities.

Law enforcement officials will certainly have their hands full plugging this hole in the dike. Once they are able to do so, they will discover, to their chagrin, that smugglers have developed an even more brilliant, ingenious, and virtually impossible-to-detect method for getting their product to their customers. Thus it ever was, and thus it shall ever be.

Yeah, and going to college REALLY worked for me, eh???

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 18, 2003 6:32 AM.

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