Richard Baker

We're the Federals.

You have to go through us.

And from the other side of the coin was I think they would go, well, yeah, when we do, you're too slow and you don't want to do it and you get tied up being the traditional Australia way where the most over-governed... This is a bit of editorial licence for me, most over-governed country in the world.

And I've actually got a really good interview with an ex-DEA agent in the podcast where he goes, you know, one...

And he's done a lot of work with Australian police over the years and he goes, one thing I noticed, he goes, you've got some great police.

He goes, but man, you've got so much red tape and bureaucracy, it stops police from acting like police.

You've got to tick so many boxes before you can actually just do stuff.

Yeah, just we're a great market because we're one of the world's biggest consumers per capita.

So you've got really strong demand.

And because of the difficulties in getting in the distance, getting cocaine to Australia and New Zealand, we pay crazy money, $350, $400 a gram.

And also, don't complain about really low quality.

They'll often cut

the product and put other sort of bulking agents and things in there.

This is to increase their profit, adding some really dangerous things like synthetic opioids, which are called nitazines, fentanyl, into the powder.

And the user has absolutely no way, there's no way to tell.

And so we've actually seen in Australia, and there's some coronial data supporting this in the last few years, a rise in accidental overdose deaths from people who think they're just consuming cocaine that has been laced with nitrosine.

And that's like, I think it's 500 times more powerful than morphine.

So you don't need much.

And what we're seeing actually is in the Pacific islands like Fiji and Australia,

Tonga and different places, which the cartels have now got a foothold in and are using them basically as depots or warehouses to store cocaine to make it easier to supply Australia and New Zealand because the distance is shorter.