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NEWS > EVERYONE ELSE > INTERPOL CRACKING DOWN ON INTERNATIONAL HAIR TRADE
INTERPOL CRACKING DOWN ON INTERNATIONAL HAIR TRADE
August 5 2011
London, U.K. – The quest for youth and beauty has always been a major part of the human experience. On the surface such expeditions seem to be superficial or simply related to sex and marriage, but the quest goes much deeper than that. The quest 
for beauty is the quest for acclaim and success. It is the meaning of life for many people.
That importance, that long-held influence, is exactly what international police are now having to fight against as the trade in human hair starts to extend across borders. Small by the standards of other international trades, such as drugs, human hair has nonetheless become a multi-million dollar industry and has spread to nearly every country in the world, something policing officials believe is only going to get worse.
“Today the United Kingdom is the third largest buyer of human hair, outside the United States and China. Considering the disparity in populations that makes this country the highest per capita purchaser and the best example of this trade,” said an Interpol agent. “We have been working with local police for a long time trying to crack down on these criminals but thus far have been only achieving limited success.”
The rise in internet trading has been a major part of the growth.
“We are seeing people using the web for commerce in this product. Not only are they using underground sites and message boards but also prominent sites like Facebook and Twitter, often using a special coded language,” continued the agent. “This has made it very difficult to track down and to capture the people involved but we will catch them. That is what we do.”
The bulk of human hair comes from two countries, India (29%) and Brazil (50%).
“On the surface buying and selling human hair wouldn’t seem that important and issue but it is the harvesting of this product which is the real concern. Young and poor women are often exploited in order to grow this hair. It is then removed and sold via agents and little or no money goes back to the individual who grew it. This is what we are trying to arrest,” continued the agent. “Most people simply don’t care where their hair comes from. They walk into a salon and get extensions, or they go onto a slick looking website and place and order. What they don’t see is the pain this hair growth and removal causes and that is where we come in.”
Efforts to brand hair as naturally grown and conflict free have largely fallen.
“This is one of the major issues of the modern world. Criminals are able to use these new forms of communication to further their enterprises and in the process they industrialize the exploitation of poor people, people who have little or no choice. This is the modern economy of the connected world,” concluded the agent. “By making people aware of the consequences of their actions we can halt this exploitation just as we have done with diamonds. That is the model on which we are basing these actions, it’s what we aspire to.”
Hair cartels in Brazil have killed at least thirty people this year, a number considered on the low end for Brazilian cartels.
Emil Uliya, International Correspondent
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