8 tons sounds about the daily consumption in Londons banking district alone
Just like they use people smuggling in their colon
I would think anybody doing that will never pass any PPL exams 
8 tons sounds about the daily consumption in Londons banking district alone…
The issue is that the smugglers play cat and mouse with the police and if you disregard GA, because it’s so small, that’s what the criminals are going to use. Just like they use people smuggling in their colon when the police cracks down on container smuggling.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/23/coke-consumption-uk-millennials-generation-x
GIYF tells me the UK consumes 120 tonnes of cocaine and 40 tonnes of heroin per annum. This sounds exaggerated and may include amounts which use the UK as an entrepôt?
London uses around 8 tonnes of cocaine per annum, which sounds a better estimate.
In any event industrial scale amounts which can’t possibly just slip through the net!
@Cobalt but the hope is consumption will actually reduce?
They only decriminalised possession for personal use and consumption, not supply, so the stuff will still be smuggled.
The industrial quantities that are shipped through container ports (not difficult to figure out which ones, just test the water) suggests either a resigned police force, political indifference or possibly worse.
The world is still observing the experiment in decriminalisation in Portugal to see if this might be a solution.
This IAOPA post is worth a read
if you want to fly to the Isle of Man you have to tell the police you’re doing it 12 hours before you do, or fly into a tightly controlled airline airport.
It is 12hrs in either case (GAR PN)
I think the answer is greed. And it has always gone on at some low level. At one point some years ago they busted a fairly busy smuggling operation involving ULs flying at a low level, Ireland – UK mainland.
As I wrote, the weakest link will be the clients you are working for. They are prob90 under surveillance, and if not now they will soon be. In the drug business there is a huge number of loose ends… all the dealers etc.
It is also stupid because the plane will be tainted. If you ever get a dog sniff squad (like I got at Aosta LIMW) they will find something and will take the plane apart.
A much better smuggling operation will involve working for a small circle of trusted clients who are not doing drugs, and instead are doing stuff like expensive watches and jewellery, where the transport “merely” avoids import duty and VAT. And probably with side benefits like money laundering. I can think of a highly probable case of this but won’t post it.
Tigerflyer wrote:
I‘m wondering that small planes are not used more often for this kind of business.
I’m wondering why they are used at all for this. They aren’t that easy to hide, are expensive, have poor payload, and are surrounded by officialdom and paperwork. Even an inexpensive boat can smuggle 100x what even a large GA aircraft can do, and tend to have far less officialdom. For instance, if you want to fly to the Isle of Man you have to tell the police you’re doing it 12 hours before you do, or fly into a tightly controlled airline airport. But in a boat you can anchor up in any random bay or anchorage and bring the stuff onto land on a rubber dinghy and chances are no one will even know you were there.
in order for docs to prescribe something, it has to pass quality and safety certifications. How would you do that with potentially lethal drugs?
I guess you know that many (most?) prescription and non-prescription drugs are actually lethal, right? One generally found in every household straight off the top of my head – paracetamol…. 
