When the national budget was presented, it became known that the government is increasing the allocations to the Customs Agency. The rationale is to combat drug trafficking. The weak control in the ports has been an open invitation to unlimited drug smuggling in containers – the Trojan horses of our time. It is good that more is being invested in the Customs Service, but based on the rationale, one may be left with the impression that drugs are the only thing that the Customs Service protects us against. There is much more to societal security that depends on good border control. I am not referring to the control of persons, but to the control of goods. Thing. Best positioned The Customs Service is the only one whose task it is to control all ‘things’ that enter the country. They are often the only ones from the state at the border. They are best placed and have the best authority to carry out these checks. They enforce the regulations of 19 (!) other agencies. In 2023, the customs authority seized 135,000 pairs of fake SWIMS shoes. This was the largest seizure of fake brands in Norwegian history. Photo: NTB Among these, one finds rules relating to pollution, explosives, chemicals and sanctions. Because the Customs Service is where they are, and because they have this authority, they are also in the best position to detect imported crime: They can observe what is going on at the border and catch trends, which they pass on to other control agencies. Prevent spread The customs office is like a skin. Our skin is stretched thin over a large area. It does not protect against all diseases, but an area without skin is much more vulnerable. Customs does for the country what the skin does for the immune system; it is one of several important barriers. Once illegal goods have entered the country, it is much more difficult to prevent their spread. Cheating can take many lives Let’s take a few examples. Your neighbor charges his e-bike battery overnight. You sleep well because you have installed a series of best-in-test smoke detectors. You have both bought from Norwegian online stores, but do you have control over the supply chain? If it’s cheat electronics, they may do the job, but much worse than one would expect. The seconds count. In this container from Ecuador, the customs officers found 50 kilos of cocaine. Photo: NTB Another example is spare parts for cars. Many people like to tinker with the car. It’s fun (I’ve heard), and much cheaper than going through a workshop. But when even workshops are fooled, private individuals have even less to defend against counterfeiting. The car coming towards you may have new brake discs, but brake weakly because they are made of a poor material. There is also cheating with seat belts and airbags. Furthermore, there is cheating on a large scale with health products. During the corona pandemic, the Customs Authority stopped tens of millions of face masks of questionable quality. But it is difficult to estimate how many more escaped. Smuggling an army The problem is thus bigger than drugs. Customs’ goods control has a direct impact on a third of the cooperation areas within social security. The unscanned Trojan horses can contain many things other than drugs: weapons, environmental toxins, cheating masks, cheating brakes and flammable electronics. And if Norway is to be invaded by an army, it might not be so stupid to have a couple of hundred containers placed strategically in important port areas at the front. At best, only a couple of them are discovered, and then what? The Trojans let in one horse statue with some hidden soldiers and lost the Trojan War. It happened more than 3,000 years ago, and they still get to hear it. But there was only one horse. We let an average of 665 potential Trojan horses into our capital – every day – and we know some of them contain things we don’t want. How good an overview do we want? Customs can never check everything, but they could have checked a lot more. A strengthening of goods control will reduce the problems in places where the effect is great. The increase in the availability of drugs is undoubtedly a huge problem. At the same time, drugs are just one of the many dangerous ‘things’ that are imported on a large scale. And not only that – it takes two years to acquire a scanner. If you know of a shop that has (genuine) scanners as an off-the-shelf item, please let Tolletaten know. In the meantime, we can have a chat about how good an overview we as a society want to have. Send us your opinion Want to write? Feel free to contact us at news Ytring with your post. The guidelines can be found here. Published 04.11.2024, at 17.00
ttn-69
