http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Sunday-Times/frontpage.html March 26 2000 BRITAIN Air passengers face drug tests on their tickets James Clark, Home Affairs Correspondent Hellawell: faces protests EVERY person flying into Britain faces having their air tickets tested for traces of drugs under ambitious plans being considered by Keith Hellawell, the government's "drug tsar". The plan, which is certain to lead to protests from civil liberties campaigners, follows research which showed that 80% of the banknotes circulating in central London bore traces of cocaine. Hellawell is organising trials of a British invention that in just a few seconds will be able to check tickets for heroin, cocaine, cannabis or ecstasy residue. The government has cleared the machine, known as a boarding pass analyser (BPA), to be set up at a British airport later this year to test for traces of plastic explosives. It is already being used on trial by the Canadian government and the Federal Aviation Administration in America. Under the planned drug-testing trial, passengers will be asked to put their tickets through the device as they go through Customs. Hellawell, whose plan has the backing of Pino Arlacchi, the United Nations' drugs supremo, will tell ministers that anyone handling drugs can expect residue to remain on their hands for anything from a few days, in the case of heroin, to several weeks, when cannabis has been touched. He wants to use the BPA machines to target couriers who have almost certainly had to handle the drugs they are smuggling. The �200,000 machine, built by Mass-Spec Analytical, based in Bristol, can detect 0.0000000001% of a gram of drugs at a rate of 1,200 tickets an hour. It works by passing air across the ticket, collecting molecules. The molecules are then blasted with electrons which break them up. Because different substances' molecules break up in different ways, due to the varying atomic weights, the collected matter can be measured to identify each substance. Joe Reevy, an executive at Mass-Spec, said: "The thing works on any substance and you can put just about anything through it. We can alter the settings to look for more residue or to ignore certain substances." If the trials succeed, and ministers can be persuaded to back the plan, new legislation would be needed to make it compulsory for all passengers. However, experts warned last week that there could be a number of problems attached to the idea. They pointed out potential legal difficulties under European law and also warned that it could lead to a mass of extra work for police and customs officers. One drugs worker said: "If this goes ahead, then 80% of people flying home from a club holiday on Ibiza are going to be getting arrested. It will be bedlam." Nevertheless, Hellawell remains determined to try the machine as he battles to stem the increasing flow of drugs into Britain. He said last week: "We want to try it and see how it performs. It will certainly have a deterrent effect because we could use it to test everyone's tickets. I recognise there will be problems, but I want to see how it operates in the field and then take it from there." Hellawell, who spoke last week to senior British detectives and FBI officers when he visited the National Criminal Intelligence Service's annual conference in Edinburgh, added: "Our main target would be couriers bringing drugs into Britain for profit." If Hellawell, whose contract as drug tsar is coming up for renewal, succeeds in getting his idea backed by the government, it would make Britain the only country in the world to test arriving passengers randomly for drugs. "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." Communist Tyrant Josef Stalin (Listen anytime to Votefraud vs Honest Elections "crash course" radio show over the internet at www.sightings.com in the archives, April 3rd, 2000 show, Jeff Rense host, Jim Condit Jr. guest)
