In July, 2022, postal consignments containing opioids and benzodiazepine were seized. The post communicated its seizures via a special communication system set up by the International Narcotics Control Board. The shipments were linked to five organized crime groups in Bulgaria.
Bulgarian authorities dismantled the groups, seizing 120,000 pills and 40 kilograms of new psychoactive substances, and stopping 200 outbound international postal consignments destined for countries throughout Europe, North America and Oceania, said Jagjit Pavadia, former Narcotics Commissioner of India, board member and former president of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB).She shared this story in an interview with Ian Kerr, host of the UPU’s Voicemail podcast, on a recent episode in which she discussed the coordinated effort between postal operators and the INCB to stop the flow of drugs through delivery channels.
“This partnership has been very powerful and will prove to be very important in the interdiction of opioids through postal processes,” Pavadia said.
As a subsidiary of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the INCB’s role, beyond ensuring adequate supply of medicines for scientific and medical purposes, includes disruption of illicit drug trafficking. The INCB relies on partners like postal operators to help, especially as the illicit drug trade morphs and shipments through delivery channels become harder to detect.
“Traffickers are one step ahead of us and every day some new substance turns up on the horizon,” she said.
These days, drug trafficking is more than plant-based drugs like heroin and cocaine, but includes synthetics, such as synthetic opioids, with small yet potent volumes that can be shipped in very small consignments, Pavadia said. Additionally, the INCB watches for precursor materials used in the chain of drug manufacturing and use.
“They're very difficult to detect,” she said of the smaller consignments used by traffickers, “and there are hundreds and thousands of them.”
To complicate matters, in many places, Pavadia said, these drugs and their precursors are not defined by governments, making it difficult to detect or stop them in transit. To combat such challenges, the UPU and INCB work together to increase awareness and global intelligence exchanges.
The postal operators share with the INCB the issues they face, and the INCB educates postal operators about developing risk profiling of packages, such as origin country, declared value, and amount of remittance.
“So far, we have networked 289 postal security operators, six UPU regional postal security managers. We've developed safe interdiction approaches, training for dangerous opioids, and delivered capacity building to 577 postal operators worldwide,” Pavadia said. “And we have hosted six international expert group operational meetings to counter trafficking via postal channels.”*
New technologies also play a role. The INCB’s IONICS (Project Ion Incident Communication System) communications tool collects shared intelligence that builds patterns to highlight trafficking routes, quantities, and drug type. This can provide advanced targeting risk profiling of inbound and outbound consignments.
IONICS aligns well with the UPU’s development of a dangerous-goods search tool that can help interdict dangerous goods before they enter the postal channels, Pavadia said.
“Through the UPU-INCB (Memorandum of Understanding) we will have the ability to flag in real time suspicious consignments previously communicated via IONICS,” she said.
The impacts of drug trafficking go beyond the dangers of the toxic substances themselves and illuminate the myriad social and economic issues.
To fight trafficking, governments must divert resources from infrastructure, education, and healthcare, she said, and face increasing healthcare costs to treat victims of the drug trade system. Communities face violence and corruption, which can damage a country’s reputation. Additionally, illicit crop growth leads to deforestation and soil degradation, affecting agricultural sustainability and rural development.
“That becomes an added burden on the social economic fabric,” Pavadia said.
Listen to the full episode of Voice Mail with Jagjit Pavadia here.
*Numbers as of October 2023.