Colombian cartels turning their attention to heroin
U.S. being bombarded with drug, officials say

By Tod Robberson / The Dallas Morning News

VEGA LARGA, Colombia Atop the misty green peaks of the Andes,
Colombian and U.S. antinarcotics police are waging a fierce new war
against a drug mafia that appears intent on bombarding the United States
with some of the purest, cheapest heroin either nation has ever seen.

Officials of both countries say the thousands of acres of opium poppies
being cultivated near this mountain town represent a dramatic change in
the export and marketing practices of Colombia's major drug cartels.
Having spent decades focusing on cocaine production, traffickers now are
turning in droves to the lucrative and largely untapped international
heroin market.

In some cases, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
officials and Colombian antinarcotics police, Colombian traffickers are
handing over some of their most cherished U.S. cocaine markets to their
Mexican competitors, apparently so they can focus exclusively on the
heroin trade.

The apparent reason for the shift is that heroin is easier to smuggle,
yields far higher profits than cocaine and represents a market the
Colombians can control, for now, without fear of encroachment from
Mexico's increasingly powerful and violent drug cartels.

"The theory is that the Colombians are consciously ceding their . . .
[cocaine markets] to the Mexicans," a senior DEA official in Washington
said.

He added that Colombian cartels appear to have relinquished most of
their cocaine markets on the West Coast, Midwest and Texas to Mexicans
at the same time they are bombarding the East Coast with heroin.

"We believe the whole structure is undergoing a fundamental change," he
said. "In the past, if this [Mexican encroachment on Colombian turf] had
happened, there would have been a bloodbath."

To avoid having to cut Mexican cartels in on the heroin trade, Colombian
traffickers are turning to smuggling routes by way of the Caribbean,
even though overland routes through Mexico are better established and
often have a higher probability of successfully landing the product in
the United States, officials said.

"We believe it is a result of stronger competition between the two,"
said Col. Leonardo Gallego, chief of Colombia's 2,300member
antinarcotics police force. "We have every reason to expect the
phenomenon to continue developing this way."

Opium flowering

Evidence of the exploding heroin trade is visible on steep hillsides and
mountaintops all over the Andean region of central Colombia, where opium
poppies grow as plentifully as bluebonnets on a rural Texas roadside.
The 3foottall, redflowered plants are not native to the Americas and
must be carefully cultivated to yield the opium resin cherished by
traffickers as the base ingredient for heroin.

A 2.5acre strip of land can yield enough opium to produce about 2.2
pounds of heroin. Farmers on a plot that size can earn up to $14,000 a
year cultivating opium, in contrast to the $4,000 the same plot would
yield in coca leaf, the main ingredient for making cocaine, according to
Patrick L. Clawson and Rensselaer W. Lee, authors of the 1996 book The
Andean Cocaine Industry.

"Colombian traffickers have diversified into heroin, and this is no
accident it's a shrewd marketing decision made to capitalize on the
increased profits that can be derived from heroin trafficking," DEA
Administrator Thomas A. Constantine warned two years ago, when Colombian
cartels controlled only about 30 percent of the U.S. market.

Since then, the Colombian market share has doubled and is still growing.
The trend has so worried the Clinton administration that it has formed a
Special Bilateral Commission for the Control of Heroin and is sending
Mr. Constantine to Colombia next week to review eradication and
interdiction efforts.

Last week, the two governments concluded negotiations on the release of
$40 million in antinarcotics aid to the Colombian police and armed
forces. Antinarcotics aid is not affected by Colombia's
"decertification" in the last two years for failing to satisfy U.S.
standards in its antidrug efforts.

As recently as 1990, opium cultivation in Colombia was so sparse that it
was not even registered in U.S. official statistics on world heroin
production. Today, Colombia has an estimated 50,000 acres of opium poppy
under cultivation, with a potential yield of 22 tons of pure heroin
annually.

Although this still represents less than 2 percent of total worldwide
production, aggressive marketing tactics employed by Colombian
traffickers have enabled them to capture more than 60 percent of the
total U.S. heroin market and up to 90 percent of the market on the East
Coast.

Free samples

The senior DEA official said the Colombians have been able to maximize
their market share using wellestablished cocaine sales outlets,
offering a cheaper and higherpurity heroin than that offered by Asian
traffickers, and by "double breasting" their sales offering a free
sample of heroin with each purchase of cocaine to get customers hooked
quickly.

And whereas cocaine is a relatively bulky commodity that must be
smuggled in large bundles on ships and airplanes, one person, known as a
"mule," can smuggle a comparatively more valuable parcel of heroin
inside something as small as a handbag.

"It is typical for the mule to place the heroin in a condom or a capsule
and swallow it," Col. Gallego said. "A single mule can carry one to 1
1/2 kilos of heroin into the United States swallowed into the
intestines. And it is very difficult to detect."

The smuggling ploys are limitless, officials say. In midJune, a
wheelchairbound, 63yearold Colombian woman was arrested boarding a
flight to Miami carrying more than a pound of pure heroin. Last week,
six American Airlines mechanics were arrested in Miami in connection
with a smuggling operation using empty spaces in Boeing 757 jets to hide
packets of heroin and cocaine. In all, they are believed to have
smuggled 1,100 pounds of cocaine and 22 pounds of heroin.

During an eradication mission last week, paramilitary police under Col.
Gallego's command expressed frustration at the slow pace of their
efforts to put a dent in the heroin trade. The location of the opium
fields, on windy, rainswept mountainsides at elevations exceeding 8,000
feet, drastically reduce the effectiveness of aerial spraying, said
Capt. Herman Pineda, 49, who was trained over cornfields in Georgia and
has piloted a U.S.made crop duster here for the past six years.

"The hardest part is the altitude and the steepness. They don't have
mountains like this in Georgia," he said, adding that a steep incline
makes it harder for pilots to swoop down over opium fields and hit them
directly with herbicide.

Another problem is the weakness of the herbicide itself a constant
source of bickering between the U.S. and Colombian governments. State
Department officials said they have been pushing the Colombian
government to use a stronger herbicide designed to stick to plants in
all types of weather. But President Ernesto Samper has opted to use a
weaker herbicide, citing fears of ecological damage.

U.S. officials assert that Mr. Samper's choice of herbicide might be a
deliberate attempt to undermine the eradication program, which most
threatens the Cali drug cartel leaders who funneled nearly $6 million to
his 1994 presidential campaign.

"It certainly gives pause as to why they don't want this program to be
more effective," one State Department official said. The U.S. government
estimates only 30 percent to 35 percent of all illicit crops are
actually killed using the Colombianpreferred herbicide.

Col. Gallego said his estimates are closer to 70 percent. He insisted
the Samper government is completely behind his eradication efforts.

"I'm involved in a fight here where people's lives are at stake every
day. If the government wasn't totally behind me, I wouldn't be doing
this," he said.

War on drugs

On the slopes overlooking Vega Larga, the U.S.supplied weaponry and
gear toted by Col. Gallego's paramilitary police leave little doubt that
the war on drugs truly is a war. Guerrillas of Colombia's two main
leftist rebel groups maintain bases a short distance away and provide
protection for opium farmers.

Farther north, Col. Gallego said, rightwing paramilitary militias
provide protection around the clandestine laboratories that process the
raw opium into heroin. He acknowledged that some of the militias are the
same ones accused by international human rights groups of maintaining
working alliances with the Colombian armed forces.

>From a helicopter looking down on Vega Larga, antinarcotics police
pointed to a location where they say leftist guerrillas are known to
hide out, using longrange rifles to hit highflying aircraft.

"We tell the army where they are. . . . They still haven't gone in to
get them," said Capt. Lizardo Vargas, commander of an antinarcotics
squad based in Neiva, 90 miles southeast of Cali.

"Our planes get shot up all the time," Capt. Pineda said, pointing out
various patches on his plane where bullets had passed through the wings
and fuselage. A few weeks ago, a guerrilla fired at the cockpit of one
plane and shot a colleague of Capt. Pineda in the eye. An American pilot
helping train another of Capt. Pineda's colleagues was killed by ground
fire earlier this year.

In three years, Col. Gallego said, 43 agents under his command have been
killed in action. An average of 70 per year are wounded. Three
helicopters and two aircraft have been shot down.

"We had a helicopter take 15 rounds a few weeks ago," Capt. Pineda said.
"I never actually see the guerrillas when I'm flying. All I see is their
tracer bullets flying past my plane."