COLOMBIAN HEROIN TRAFFIC ON THE RISE by CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, The Associated Press

Standing waisthigh in red, pink, and violet poppy
flowers, a peasant delicately slits a plant bulb with a
razor. Milkywhite opium gum, the key ingredient in heroin,
oozes from the gash. "This work is innocent because I'm
just making a few pesos," says Chucho, who sells the opium
in San Jose de las Hermosas, a ramshackle village an hour's
walk down the valley.

It is the first stage in the making of highpurity
Colombian heroin that in the last few years has grabbed a
big chunk of the U.S. East Coast market for the drug. Some
Colombian heroin is also reaching Europe.

On Feb. 28, the United States cited the growing threat
of Colombian heroin among reasons for decertifying
Colombia, the world's biggest producer of cocaine, as an
ally in the war on drugs.

Dwarfed by decadesold Asian heroin trafficking
networks, Colombia produces only 1.5 percent of the world's
opium, which is refined through a chemical process into
morphine, and then heroin.

But Colombians have promoted the drug with the same
entrepreneurial agility they applied to cocaine, making
strong inroads in the biggest U.S. heroin market, the
Northeast. American officials say they account for at least
80 percent of heroin sales in the New York area. The key is
simple: markeddown prices for whitepowder heroin so pure
that it can be smoked or snorted instead of injected,
avoiding the use of needles and the danger of AIDS.

The price of a pound of Colombian heroin in the United
States is as low as $ 38,000; a pound from Southeast Asia
might cost twice as much.

The production chain begins in remote places such as
San Jose in Colombia's Tolima province.

There is no police station. Army patrols rarely venture
here.

Leftist rebels who tax opium buyers rule the hills.

Armed guerrillas in civilian clothing who belong to the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's
biggest rebel band, monitor traffic and make sure opium
traders do not get mugged.

Colombians started growing poppy in the late 1980s, and
heroin cooks were brought in from Asia to teach them how to
make heroin. High prices encouraged a planting boom in the
early 1990s, which in turn produced a big supply that has
pushed down prices despite periodic croppoisoning raids by
police planes.

Sixtytwo percent of the heroin seized at U.S. airports
in 1995 was from Colombia. Five years ago, the percentage
was negligible.

The statistic, however, reflects in part that Colombians
usually smuggle heroin by sending it in with more easily
detected couriers on commercial flights to Miami and New
York.

Asian traffickers usually smuggle heroin in greater bulk
into the United States by sea, which is harder to detect
and therefore seized less often.

The Colombians use of"mules"who hide 4 or 5 pounds of
heroin in suitcases or swallow rubber packets filled with
the drug is an indication that it is still a business for
smalltime operators.

By contrast, Colombia's cocaine cartels smuggle their
product by the ton on jets, boats, and even small
submarines.

So far, the cartels seem unwilling to branch into
heroin, said an official at U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration headquarters in Arlington, Va.

"They're making so much money in the cocaine business,
they may not at this moment see a need to diversify,"he
said in a telephone interview. He asked that his name not
be used for security reasons because his work brings him to
Colombia.

Copyright (c) 1997, Bergen Record Corp.