British top smugglers list British citizens top the list of foreigners trying to export drugs out of Jamaica. Statistics from police stationed at Norman Manley and the Sangster International Airports show that 30 per cent of the foreigners caught last year were British, while the other 70 per cent were from 13 other countries. At the Sangster International Airport, located in Montego Bay, 83 British citizens were arrested for drug trafficking in 2000, while 41 Jamaicans and 65 Americans were arrested. Up to April of this year, 32 British citizens, 15 Jamaicans and 19 Americans were caught. Sangster is the international gateway to and from the popular tourist resorts on Jamaica's north coast. In Kingston, at Norman Manley International, 99 foreigners were arrested last year; 65 of those were British, 16 were Americans while 152 Jamaicans were caught. The figures on the nationalities of those arrested since the start of this year was not available. Alvena Ewan, police superintendent at the Norman Manley International Airport, confirmed that "most foreigners arrested are British. But most of them are blacks, some were born in Britain of Jamaican parentage, others are British citizens but Jamaican nationals." The police say that the high resale value of cocaine in Britain is an incentive for traffickers. "One kilogram of coke in England is 70,000 pounds (sterling)," said Superintendent Gladstone Wright of the Narcotics Division of the Jamaica Constabulary Force. "...There's lots of money to be made." Supt. Wright also explained that the persons caught are often naive, ignorant and poor. "Sometimes, young people are told: 'If you go to Jamaica and bring a little something back you will get tickets and 2,000 pounds sterling.' Some of them don't know what they are coming for, some do - that is a lot of money that the ordinary person doesn't have and they are willing to take a chance," Supt. Wright said. Inspector Rutherford Gor-don of the Montego Bay police, explained how in desperation a 19-year-old woman who had a two-year-old son, resorted to smuggling drugs when her boyfriend was put in prison. "She did it for economic reasons, she is not a rich person," he said. A report in The Gleaner last month stated that more than half of the foreigners serving time in British jails for drugs were Jamaicans. The report showed that between April 1999 and March 2000, 278 (62 per cent) of the 450 people arrested at British airports for trafficking cocaine came off flights coming from Jamaica and 94 of the 139 people stopped with cannabis (marijuana) came from Jamaica. K.B.
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