The new heroin
Mexico must crack down on cash crop

07/14/97

Business has been booming with Mexico, but tragically it includes a
sinister product that is corrupting both countries: a more potent
heroin.

Mexico now produces up to 30 percent of the heroin used in the United
States. In Texas, the country's market share is an estimated 80 to 90
percent, owing to the 900mile TexasMexico border and the millions of
crossings that occur there each year.

Most of the heroin comes from three states: Chihuahua, Durango and
Sinaloa. Each is close to the Pacific Ocean and the U.S. border, which
eases smuggling into the United States. Each contains part of the long
Sierra Madre mountain range, where the opium poppies, from which heroin
is extracted, grow.

Mexican heroin is distinguishable by its dark color and texture hence,
the names black tar and brown heroin. It is less refined than heroin
from other big producing countries in South America and South Asia, and
therefore less potent.

But Mexican heroin's potency is increasing, as its producers strive to
compete better with Colombian and Asian producers for the lucrative U.S.
market. In 1993, the U.S. spent $7 billion on heroin. Several decades
ago, the Mexican drug's average purity was only 3 to 6 percent; today,
it is about 30 percent pure, or almost double its 1991 average.

Mexican heroin enters Texas clandestinely by boat through Houston or
other Gulf Coast ports. It comes across on commercial and private
aircraft. And it crosses by land on human couriers known as "mules," who
pack it tightly against their bodies to avoid detection or haul it in
their stomachs in wrapped, sausageshaped packages that they have
swallowed.

Shutting down the trade at the border would be difficult at best,
although more random searches would help. Five thousand Mexican trucks
enter the United States daily. Fiftytwo million vehicles crossed the
border in 1995.

The sheer difficulty of eliminating the crossborder trafficking of
heroin is one big reason the joint U.S.Mexican antinarcotics strategy
necessarily emphasizes destroying the drug before it is ever extracted
from the brilliantly colored poppies in the Sierra Madre. Last year, the
Mexican government eradicated 19,500 acres of opium poppies, leaving
approximately 12,600 acres of harvestable cultivation, according to the
U.S. State Department. Left unchecked, the 1996 crop could have produced
14 tons of heroin. Through eradication, potential production was reduced
to six tons.

As the Mexican government has gotten better at eradicating big poppy
fields, growers have gotten more sophisticated, sowing small fields
known as plantillas, and using natural foliage to camouflage their crops
and processing laboratories. Growers have also responded by expanding
cultivation, moving south along the Sierra Madre into other Pacific
coast states and even into the Central American country of Guatemala.

But interdiction of heroin is still a big part of any sound drug control
strategy, as is destruction of the Mafialike organizations in Mexico's
northern states that control the product's export and wholesale
distribution in the southwestern United States.

Reducing U.S. demand also must be a big part of any solution, as
President Clinton explicitly recognized during his May visit to Mexico's
capital. The 97page "U.S.Mexico BiNational Drug Threat Assessment"
released by both countries during Mr. Clinton's visit appropriately
recognized the United States' growing misuse of heroin. It also
acknowledged the need for "a comprehensive, longterm strategy to
reduce, and ultimately eliminate all aspects of the problem."

A comprehensive solution demands highlevel attention to the problem.
Aware that growing tension over drugs in general was damaging their
bilateral relations without making much of a dent in the problem, the
United States and Mexico last year responded by forming a cabinetlevel
group to address the issue. The increased cooperation made possible by
the socalled High Level Contact Group was almost ruined this winter
after Mexico arrested its top antidrug enforcer for allegedly taking
payoffs from drug lords and the U.S. Congress responded by nearly
overturning Mr. Clinton's decision to certify Mexico as a full ally in
the war on drugs.

Despite the corruption that pervades Mexican law enforcement and parts
of Mexico's government, the High Level Contact Group is a good idea. The
war against the new heroin is too important to be left to antidrug
enforcers alone. It requires political attention at the highest levels.

The United States should continue to encourage Mexico to destroy as many
poppies as possible. To that end, Mr. Clinton is right to have promised
Mexico everything possible to help it fight all the drug scourges that
afflict it.

Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo has declared drug trafficking to be
Mexico's top national security threat. The United States can do no less
than to support his efforts with money, materiel and, on the domestic
front, education, treatment and tough law enforcement action.

Mexican heroin won't go away by itself. It needs a strong shove.

Fourth in a series