Drugs & thugs
In 2006, then Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Chief Richard Deering called a news conference to disclose shocking revelations. Police were on the verge of infiltrating a significant child pornography ring, he told reporters. It’s a “major investigation ... which has the potential of being a huge, huge investigation,” he said, and could involve dozens of people. That’s news. So The Telegram reported it. Two weeks later, police arrested one man, Mehnad Shablak, on charges of taking nude pictures of teenagers and sexually assaulting them. In the following years, the charges were reduced to eight counts of either possessing, making, printing, or publishing child pornography. Shablak was sentenced to time served. Deering blamed The Telegram for sensationalizing the story. But defence lawyer Jeff Brace placed the blame squarely on Deering.
“The spin, for lack of a better term, that had been placed on this by the chief at the time certainly aggravated the circumstances,” Brace said after sentencing.
The police and the media have a symbiotic relationship. Police want to get their message out, and reporters know the public wants to hear it. But sometimes the message can get a little distorted.
On Thursday, the RNC revealed the spoils of a major drug bust. RNC Supt. Marlene Jesso was quite liberal with her observations about the seizure.
She suggested the $200,000 worth of marijuana and hashish was the biggest to date in the province. At least one Telegram reader correctly pointed out that $225-million worth of hash found on the resettled island of Ireland’s Eye in the 1980s eclipses any such claim.
As well, Jesso inferred that the drugs likely had ties to organized crime, and therefore terrorism.
“We’re looking at Afghanistan. I mean, that’s where you look at ISIS and terrorism,” she said.
But ISIS, the terrorist regime that’s overrun parts of Iraq and Syria, is unlikely to have direct connections to the Afghan drug trade.
That’s not to say a terrorist link is completely out of the question. If anywhere, that link might include Africa. “Experts say Mali is now becoming one of West Africa’s hubs for opium shipments to the U.S. and central and western Europe,” the International Business Times reported in July.
The article cites a United Nations document that estimated global opium production reached 7,554 tonnes in 2014, the second highest level in 80 years. According to another report, Afghanistan’s share of that was 6,400 tonnes.
Of course, these are opium products. Hash and marijuana come from the cannabis plant. But Afghanistan also currently leads the world in hashish production.
Nonetheless, the origins of the drugs on display Thursday are hazy at best. And at a time when terrorism has become a major political football, perhaps it’s wise not to get too carried away until the facts are in.