HUGE HEROIN RING BROKEN BY U.S. AS 280 ARRESTED

S.D. Was Key Center For Mexico-Based Outfit

Federal authorities said yesterday they have dismantled a huge Mexico-based
heroin organization that maintained a key distribution center in San Diego
and sought customers at methadone clinics throughout the United States.

More than 280 people have been arrested nationwide in the two-year
investigation, with 32 of those arrests made yesterday in San Diego County,
primarily in Oceanside. Five more people indicted in San Diego are still at
large.

Federal officials say the arrests will help raise the price of heroin --
and hopefully reduce its use -- in San Diego and 12 other cities where
smugglers were arrested. The Drug Enforcement Administration said San Diego
has among the least-expensive heroin in the nation.

Black tar heroin, which usually comes from Mexico, is often cheaper than
the more highly processed white heroin from Colombia. Authorities said the
black tar heroin sold by the organization was also unusually pure, which
meant that it could be especially lethal.

Authorities linked the organization's shipments to the deaths of 85 people
in Chimayo, N.M., between 1995 and 1998. The town of 5,000 is located 90
miles north of Albuquerque.

Authorities are also investigating an overdose in Oceanside to determine
whether there is a link.

"This organization operated in a dangerously efficient manner," Attorney
General Janet Reno said yesterday in Washington. "Not only did this group
exhibit disregard for the law, but their peddling of this powerful and
addictive drug showed an even greater disregard for human life."

One of the Mexico-based leaders, Issas Hernandez Garcia, was arrested late
yesterday by Mexican authorities. U.S. officials said they will seek to
extradite anyone arrested in Mexico.

Steve Wiley, an FBI special agent in Los Angeles, called the organization's
strategy of targeting methadone clinics "heinous."

"They were targeting those people as a marketing strategy for customers,"
he said. "In my opinion, it doesn't get any worse that that."

Some people were initially offered the drug free. The group also co-opted
some clinic employees and lured people to heroin "shooting galleries,"
officials said.

Fifteen years ago, heroin sold on the streets of San Diego at a 3 percent
to 6 percent purity level. Today, users can buy heroin between 60 percent
to 70 percent purity, which means they need less to get high.

Because it was selling the drug so cheaply, the smuggling ring forced
competitors to lower their prices, U.S. Attorney Gregory Vega said
yesterday. In 1999, black tar heroin sold for as much as $3,000 an ounce in
San Diego. By early this year the price had dropped to $1,450 an ounce.

"With heroin cheaper and more pure, we're seeing younger and younger
addicts," said Eric Mosely, a drug prevention specialist in North County.
"All of a sudden, parents are saying, 'I had no idea my little girl was
smoking heroin.' "

Earl Chavez, special agent in charge of the DEA in San Diego, said the
arrests will lead to a shortage of heroin. "In North County, especially,
there's going to be a serious shortage."

Former addicts and treatment professionals say that even with a price
increase, addicts will probably keep buying.

"A heroin addict will do anything and pay anything to get the drug," said a
19-year-old North County woman who entered a treatment program six days ago.

The woman, who asked to remain anonymous because of the possible stigma of
her addiction, estimated she spent at least $900 a month on the habit she
started at 17.

"There are so many heroin addicts in North County, it's horrible," she
said. "They're kids who live in beautiful houses, their parents are still
married; they just got mixed up with the wrong stuff."

Once associated with older, inner-city addicts, heroin is also being used
by middle-class suburbanites, authorities said. A form of the drug that is
inhaleble or smokable has emerged, prompting some people to conclude,
incorrectly, that it's less addictive.

North County has mirrored that trend, Mosely said. Teen-agers, who know the
drug by the slang term chiva, Spanish for goat, try it without realizing
how addictive it is. Four years ago, less than 1 percent of eighth-graders
surveyed in North County said they had tried heroin, Mosley said. Last
year, that number increased to 3.2 percent.

Operation Black Tar grew out of a DEA investigation that began in San Diego
in 1998, when 4.1 pounds of heroin was seized at the San Ysidro border
crossing.

Investigators eventually were led to the heroin trafficking organization,
which was shipping 80 to 100 pounds of black tar heroin a month into the
United States from Tijuana and elsewhere along the Southwest border. The
ring didn't appear to be linked to any major drug-trafficking organization.

Most of the drugs were moved in small quantities, hidden on the smugglers'
bodies or concealed in vehicles.

Michele Leonhart, a DEA special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office,
said the operation was tight-knit, and that many of the members were related.

Ringleaders based in Los Angeles coordinated the distribution and directed
shipments, which reached cities from Steubenville, Ohio, to Portland, Ore.,
authorities said.

"Without a doubt the arrests will have an impact not only in North County
but across the United States," said William Gore, special agent in charge
of the FBI's San Diego office. "This was a significant national and
international heroin trafficking organization."