US WANTS JOINT NE EFFORT VS. PURE HEROIN

New England faces the threat of an influx of heroin so pure that users
can inhale, snort or eat it instead of injecting it with needles, White
House drug enforcement coordinator Barry McCaffrey warned yesterday.

McCaffrey will meet today with law enforcement leaders from the six
New England states to discuss how to combat the problem.

McCaffrey said the high-purity heroin comes to the area primarily from
New York City, but the Canadian border also remains vulnerable to drug
smugglers.

"It's essentially unguarded," McCaffrey said. "The northern border is
a frontier.... Cooperation between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
has been superb. But there's very little manpower up there."

Last year, McCaffrey established the New England High-Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area with $1 million in federal funding. The funding has
allowed local law enforcement officials to link up with FBI agents,
federal drug enforcement agents, and other agencies.

There are 30 other such zones across the country. McCaffrey said the
goal was to "target these people [smugglers] for prosecution, to focus
on the pipeline, and not just take small-scale criminals off the streets."

The New England effort only covers 12 counties in the six states. That
means that the program still hasn't arrived in some counties that have
heroin problems, such as Middlesex County, which has a substantial
trade based in Lowell.

McCaffrey said he would ask New England law enforcement officials
which counties should be added to the program and he thought Middlesex
would be among those suggested. The program's budget this year has
increased to over $1.85 million. McCaffreypromised to seek more
funding to add new counties.

McCaffrey said it was too early to tell how well the program was
working. "I think the payoff will happen in the coming years,"
McCaffrey said.

Colonel Edmund Culhane, head of the Rhode Island State Police, said
that in his state, more large drug seizures have been made since the
HIDTA program began. He also said that working with other states would
enable him to dismantle much larger drug operations.

The theory behind the HIDTA program is that local police in drug-
riddled areas need help to fight criminal organizations that can easily
spill over jurisdictional boundaries.

McCaffrey said that Connecticut's Bradley International Airport, as
well as airports in Manchester, N.H.; Burlington, Vt.; and Warwick,
R.I. were vulnerable to drug traffickers.

John Gartland, special agent in charge at the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration in New England, agreed with McCaffrey.

"[High-purity heroin] is everywhere," Gartland said. "We're seeing it
in Bangor, Maine; we're seeing it in Cape Cod."

In another indication of the threat posed by heroin, the Massachusetts
Department of Public Health said Tuesday that, in 1992, 15 percent of
people admitted into state-run rehabilitation programs listed heroin
as their primary drug.

By 1999, the number of people claiming heroin addiction had more than
doubled to 32 percent, while the numbers claiming addiction to
cocaine, marijuana and alcohol declined.