HEROIN POLICING BEING SOUGHT

Thirty-six state prosecutors have asked the federal government to do more
to block an "alarming" increase in the flow of heroin from Colombia into
the United States.

In a letter, the 36 attorneys general told Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell and drug czar John P. Walters they had seen "firsthand the affects
this poison has on our country's youth." They asked the officials to devote
their "attention and resources ... to this rising problem."

"In 2000, Congress approved an aid package, now commonly known as Plan
Colombia, to assist that country in fighting the illegal drug industry
within its borders," the prosecutors said.

"While this joint effort by the United States and a cooperative Colombian
government has been successful in eradicating coca plants, commensurate
pressure must be applied to the opium fields that have proliferated in
Colombia."

The U.S. government has spent $2.5 billion since 2000 for aircraft,
military equipment and training for drug-eradication programs and other
counternarcotics operations in Colombia. Both leftist guerrillas and
right-wing paramilitaries finance their insurgencies through the sale of
cocaine and heroin.

However, the former director of the State Department's airborne
drug-eradication program has said that department mismanagement has
"seriously jeopardized" the program and its future.

John McLaughlin, who retired last month after 25 years as head of the
Office of Aviation in the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs, said the department's inability to provide "consistent
competent oversight" had contributed to the deaths of three pilots and the
capture by Marxist rebels of three others.

The State Department declined to comment on Mr. McLaughlin's charges.

Mr. Powell's office did respond to the letter from the attorneys general.

It said that while Mr. Powell shares their conviction that "more can and
should be done," the State Department was conducting a "vigorous and
successful campaign" to eradicate Colombian poppy crops. Colombia's opium
crop had been reduced by an estimated 25 percent in 2002.

In May, congressional investigators said the State Department had allowed a
flood of Colombian heroin into the United States by underestimating the
amount of the drug smuggled each year.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration recently said Colombian
traffickers had established themselves as major sources of heroin in the
Northeast, including Washington and Baltimore.

The attorneys general, including J. Joseph Curran Jr. in Maryland and Jerry
Kilgore in Virginia, said heroin has recently experienced an "alarming
surge in popularity," rising to levels not seen since the 1970s.

They said Colombian heroin is of a higher purity than either Mexican or
Asian heroin and, as a result, attracts young buyers because it can be can
be injected, smoked or snorted.