Ice 'super lab' busted (Australia)

By Amanda Hodge
April 08, 2006
A SUPER laboratory for "ice", able to produce up to 500kg of the dangerous drug a week, has been discovered in northern NSW in the nation's biggest methamphetamine lab bust.
AFP and Clandestine Drug Lab officers raided an isolated property near Murwillumbah late on Thursday, uncovering a series of buildings and a secret underground room containing laboratory equipment and precursor drugs such as pseudoephedrine and hydrogen chloride.

AFP's national border and international network manager Mike Phelan said police had traced the drug lab from information received through their overseas network, which alerted them to the sale and importation of a large volume of the precursor drugs used to make ice.

Seven men in Brisbane and NSW have been arrested in relation to the drug syndicate, believed to have links to southeast Asian drug cartels, and charged with conspiracy to produce commercial quantities of amphetamine and the use of precursor drugs.

The arrests were made under new national laws introduced last December that elevated the illegal importation of large amounts of precursors, such as pseudoephedrine, to the same crime category as importing the amphetamines themselves.

Mr Phelan said police had not yet determined the lab's production capacity and officers were still going through the property.

But he likened the enterprise to the "superlabs of southeast Asia", including a billion-dollar Fijian ice factory that was dismantled in 2004.

Those laboratories have the capacity to produce as much as 500kg of the drug, also known as crystal meth, shabu and crank, each week.

"This is one of the largest and most sophisticated clandestine drug laboratories discovered in Australia, capable of making extremely large quantities of ice," Mr Phelan said.

"We believe we have completely dismantled a major syndicate operating in Australia."

The growing market for ice in Australia has traditionally relied on imports from labs in China, Malaysia and The Philippines.

Previously uncovered Australian labs have used more basic recipes to produce a less refined ice -- a brown sludge that is administered by heating and inhaling the vapours.

But the Murwillumbah lab is the first Australian operation known to be using the technical and highly volatile low-pressure hydrogen method employed in the Asian labs to create pure crystals of methamphetamine.

Mr Phelan said such labs were still "extremely rare" in Australia, but the latest raid suggested there were more out there.

The drug is notorious for inducing violent psychotic episodes in long-term users.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18745852-2702,00.html