Irish drug dealers use ‘impressionable’ teenagers to receive cannabis by post

Irish drugs gangs have begun aping tactics deployed by the Black Axe international fraud group. The group’s members in Ireland recruit young people, often students, to allow their bank accounts be used to move the proceeds of the gang’s frauds.The tactic is designed to frustrate gardaí in their efforts to find out who has control of the money and who it is ultimately on the way to. Copying this tactic, members of small Irish drugs gangs are going to countries such as Canada and the US, where cannabis is legal, and buying relatively small quantities. READ MORE.They are then sending it back to Ireland, usually in parcel post in quantities of 5kg or less. Rather than using their own addresses, or properties that could be linked to them, they are convincing or pressuring teenagers to allow their addresses to be used.They often select minors; teenagers of an age that may not be prosecuted via the courts to the point of criminal conviction, or whose convictions as minors will not follow them into their adult lives.Det Chief Supt Seamus Boland, the head of the Garda’s Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau , told The Irish Times that the Garda were seeing more and more cases of parcels of herbal cannabisbeing intercepted on their way to minors.“It is very traumatic for the parents,” he said of people who find their child suddenly involved in drug smuggling, which only comes to light when gardaí turn up on their doorstep. He added some of those who become involved were “impressionable” or were being “pressured” by small-time criminals in their communities.“There is no risk on the purchase side, because the drug is legal there, full stop,” added Boland of the dealers travelling to the US and Canada to buy drugs in an environment where they did not need to come into contact with dangerous organised criminals.The Irish dealers are sourcing cannabis through legal means in the US and Canada at knock-down prices. Once brought into Ireland the value of each kilo rockets on the illicit market.Cannabis herb is so plentiful in Canada, for example, that some international research suggests a lower-grade kilo can be bought for little more than €500. And even a kilo of much more potent, higher-quality weed can be purchased for about €1,000.Once smuggled into the Republic, if criminals opt to sell it on immediately, acting as wholesalers to street dealers, each kilo can fetch between €3,500 and €4,000. If they decide to break it down into street deals and sell it themselves, they can generate as much as €14,000 per kilo.Though the parcel trade is only a small component of the overall smuggling landscape - most drugs still come into Ireland in freight by sea and air - it has surged as the drug has become easier to buy legally abroad. [ Inside the Black Axe raid: What gardaí found in operation targeting global crime gangOpens in new window ]Cannabis from the US and Canada - as well as from Thailand, where laws around the drug have been relaxed - accounted for 60 per cent of all of the cannabis seized at the point of entry into Ireland last year. Garda sources said the supply from those three countries has become cheap and plentiful in recent years. As a result, cannabis grow houses that once boomed in the Republic have become a smaller part of the trade here.