What?s happening With The Cannabis in South Africa?

2009.05.03

It’s called dagga over there, and there is a new generation of young British drug barons who are becoming millionaires overnight by importing high quality cannabis cheap from South Africa.

South Africa is the “over there”, and dagga what they call cannabis over there. The new gangs led by these overnight British millionaires are making profit margins as much as 4,000 percent and police are saying that that is only the tip of the iceberg. Pot is only the start point, and it generally leads to trafficking of cocaine and heroine, making these new barons richer and more powerful.

The vast majority of cannabis seizures in the U.K. is of the very potent South African cannabis. It’s why there is such a huge anti-drug crackdown there. In Britain, high quality “skunk” cannabis sells for around 3,500 pounds per kilo, whereas in South Africa, it can be bought for 20 pounds a kilo in bulk, and in some South African areas, it can be bought for only 40 pence a kilo.

The skunk is now smoked regularly by over 3 million Britons, but MP’s have approved proposals to downgrade cannabis from a class B to class C so that the focus can be on the cocaine and heroine trade. The ones who run the cannabis do it by bringing in suitcase size loads into the U.K. either through France, Germany, or Ireland.

Over the last year, at least 100 South African couriers have been detained at Dublin International Airport leading to the situation being called out of control. Eight out of ten smugglers arrested in Dublin were South African, but now the gangs have changed their tactics and they are arriving by other airports, for instance Birmingham where they have dealt with an increasing number of South African couriers. In South Africa, they have also seized shipments bound for the West Midlands.

Interpol now rates South Africa as the fourth largest cannabis producer in the world, and around a quarter of worldwide seizures involve South African cannabis. In the U.K., most of the marijuana seized there is South African, and a third of that seized globally is of South African origin.The ones who bring it in, or “Mules” are white Afrikaaners who have fallen on hard times. They are given a plane ticket and paid about 500 pounds to carry a suitcase holding up to 25 kilos of marijuana. The drugs are wrapped in plastic and are covered in coffee and carbon paper to avoid detection by drug sniffing dogs. Women are usually the mules, and they are given telephone numbers to call when they arrive in Dublin, and then they are given tickets to complete their journeys to the U.K.
 
Just to give you an idea of the money involved, if you were to pay 65,000 pounds for 825 kilos, as in a famous U.K. case, the street value would have been 4.5 million pounds
afford to lose a shipment or two. The average amount the couriers carry is 25 kilos. That costs £500, but is worth £75,000 in the UK.'