COLOMBIA BEATS OUT ASIA AS TOP HEROIN SUPPLIER TO U.S.

WASHINGTON - Colombia has displaced Southeast Asia as the top exporter of
heroin to the United States, with Miami and Puerto Rico as its main points
of entry, U.S. authorities told Congress yesterday.

The Colombian heroin is purer, stronger and cheaper than the Asian variety,
making it more attractive - and more dangerous - to casual users and
inexperienced youths, who can get started on the drug by inhaling it.

"This de-stigmatizes the use of heroin among middle- and upper-income
users, who are normally wary of needles, the traditional method of choice
by "hard-core' users," said Thomas Kneir, deputy assistant director of the
FBI's criminal investigative division.

In just two years, Colombian traffickers have gained control over the
heroin market in the northeastern United States by using existing cocaine
networks, by insisting that heroin be distributed with cocaine - at times
for free - and by using human carriers, called mules, who swallow or
smuggle the drug on their bodies.

Colombian traffickers helped double overall production of heroin in the
Western Hemisphere between 1993 and 1995. Since then, production from
Colombia, other South American countries and Mexico has leveled off to less
than six metric tons a year.

With a kilo of heroin worth about $75,000 - four to five times the price of
a kilo of cocaine - traffickers have confounded U.S. officials by smuggling
the drug in small quantities. Seizures of Colombian heroin are up by 44
percent, with about 3,000 pounds confiscated by U.S. authorities last year.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski