ANTI-COCAINE EFFORTS ALLOW HEROIN TO THRIVE

BOGOTA, Colombia--Washington's $1.3 billion war on Colombian cocaine
has had an unexpected consequence: scaled back efforts to stop the
flourishing heroin trade.

Strikes against poppy plantations in the Andes have been on hold
since December because airplanes and helicopters used in aerial
eradication missions were reassigned to the U.S.-financed push
against coca crops.

U.S. officials are calling the suspension temporary. But the halt is
frustrating Colombian police and angering some U.S. lawmakers
concerned about increasing heroin production.

Colombia is the world's leading cocaine producer and now exports more
heroin than Thailand and Pakistan. The country supplies 70 percent of
an expanding U.S. heroin market, the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration says.

At a hearing in Washington last week, Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.)
raised questions about the poppy suspension. He warned that "more
American youngsters caught up in the current heroin crisis here at
home will die needlessly for lack of an effective U.S. heroin
strategy directed at Colombia."

DEA Administrator Donnie Marshall said successful anti-heroin efforts
in Asia and years of battling cocaine in Colombia had pushed
Colombian traffickers into a booming U.S. heroin market.

Colombia still produces about 100 times as much cocaine as heroin.
But U.S. heroin use has doubled in the last five years, while casual
cocaine use has dropped 70 percent in the last decade, the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy reports.

Concern about heroin could dampen the enthusiasm over what U.S.
officials are calling a successful start to coca eradication under
Washington's $1.3 billion aid package. The United States is providing
troop training and combat helicopters to escort crop dusters over
southern coca plantations often guarded by armed rebels.

By early February, about 62,000 acres--almost a fifth of Colombia's
estimated coca crop--had been sprayed, U.S. officials said.

Gen. Gustavo Socha, head of Colombia's anti-narcotics police force,
complained the aggressive attack is undercutting the war on heroin.
Whereas his forces wiped out a record 22,700 acres of opium plants
last year, Socha said he'll be lucky to kill more than 15,000 acres
this year--a drop of more than a third.