The new heroin
Global distribution threatens nations

07/13/97

In the 1972 movie The Godfather, a heroin trafficker woos a major crime
family just after World War II. He promises that the family can make
millions more in profits if it expands from traditional crime like
gambling into the drug trade. But the family balks at crossing the murky
threshold and becoming wholesale purveyors of misery. The "narcotics
racketeer" is murdered.

Fifty years later, in real life, drug profits have become an offer that
crime syndicates around the world cannot refuse. And with 12 million
people using controlled substances each month, the United States ranks
as the greatest market in a world drug trade worth $400 billion
annually.

More alarmingly, heroin is cascading across America's borders because
the narcotic has been reintroduced as a product with more kick to the
kilo and more profit for the pound. Traditionally, cocaine use has been
highest in North America, while heroin has dominated Europe and Asia.
But patterns of heroin use may be shifting. The "new heroin" is seducing
increasing numbers of Americans between 18 and 25. They currently total
about 93,000.

Sen. John Kerry also worries for another reason. For a decade, Sen.
Kerry headed a Senate subcommittee on narcotics. In his new book, The
New War, the Massachusetts Democrat warns that international criminal
operations are funding narcoterrorism, narcodemocracy and
narcodiplomacy. The drugrelated corruption of politicians and judges is
undermining democracy and justice in developing countries.

Fueled by fat profits, the supply of heroin is expanding. More than 300
tons of heroin are believed to be processed globally each year, with
opium poppies being grown on more than 691,000 acres around the world.
Today's major sources include:

* Southeast Asia Sixtysix percent of the world's heroin supply comes
from the "Golden Triangle" formed by the boundaries of Myanmar (formerly
Burma), Laos and Thailand. The epicenter is Myanmar.

* Afghanistan Under Taliban rule, this country may already rival
Myanmar in heroin production, according to the U.S. State Department.
Fortunately, very little heroin from this source arrives in the U.S.

* Colombia Although virtually no heroin was exported from here 10
years ago, around 60 percent of the heroin seized in the U.S. last year
was from Colombia.

* Mexico It now is racing Colombia to upgrade heroin purity and
capitalize upon its geographical advantage in supplying the U.S. market.
(Mexican heroin will be addressed in a separate editorial.)

The exploding supply is helping spur renewed demand for heroin.
Accordingly, new smuggling strategies are emerging. As shown in a recent
television documentary, Drug Run, carriers known as "mules" swallow
compressed, latexwrapped packets of heroin called "fingers" to
facilitate smuggling. A mule can earn $20,000 per trip. Experts
speculate that not a single commercial flight leaves Colombia without a
smuggler on board.

Middlemen include Chinese gangs, Mexican gangs, Nigerian gangs, the
Russian Mafiya and the Italian Mafia. Along the Eastern Seaboard, the
Colombians dominate heroin distribution. Dominicans, such as the
Urdinola distribution network, work closely with Colombian drug cartels.
Chinese "triads" are leaders in smuggling Southeast Asian heroin.

Purity levels are key to the explosive trafficking. In the 1970s
streetgrade heroin was normally about 10 percent pure. Today, purity
ranges from 20 percent to 35 percent, all the way up to 70 percent and
even 95 percent. Higher purity means heroin can be "cut" into a greater
number of salable "hits."

This means a kilo of uncut heroin can be purchased wholesale for around
$150,000. But on the streets it may be stretched to bring in over $1
million.

Marketing also is improving. Traffickers routinely demand that dealers
buy heroin along with cocaine. Or they offer free samples or cut rates.
Or they push combinations of drugs, as in Dallas, where police report
the sale of heroincocaine combinations that promote euphoric descents
from intense highs.

To combat the new heroin, the United States must first recognize that
such troubling, significant changes are occurring.

While 31 tons of heroin and 13 tons of morphine were seized worldwide in
1995, this was only 10 to 15 percent of the annual production destined
for a global market of 8 million heroin users and a U.S. market of
around 600,000. Challenging those new trends will surely require a "new
war on drugs" that is continuously fought domestically and
internationally:

* The United States should reexamine its enforcement and education
efforts to reflect the changing global threat from heroin.

* A special heroin task force should immediately be set up on a
multijurisdictional basis. It should include the Drug Enforcement
Administration, the Justice Department, the Central Intelligence Agency,
the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Department of Health
and Human Services.

* Law enforcement initiatives to combat money laundering should, such as
House Resolution 1756, the Money Laundering and Financial Crimes
Strategy Act of 1997.

* The U.S. should promote heightened international cooperation. "The
problem has assumed such a global nature that it cannot be dealt with by
individual countries," the director general of the United Nations'
International Drug Control Program recently told the New York Times.

* Sen. Kerry's suggestion of funding for 1,000 U.S. agents to be
assigned overseas merits action. The investigators, prosecutors,
trainers and legal specialists would focus on law enforcement as it
relates to national security.

If the macro challenge from the new heroin is to be successfully met, we
must adjust our enforcement techniques just as shrewdly as the drug
merchants change their sinister products.

Third in a series