COCAINE WAR SPURS HEROIN TRADE

San Roque, Colombia --- Colombia and Mexico have become the dominant
suppliers of heroin to the United States, supplanting Asia, in a trend
that experts and authorities fear could offset U.S.-backed successes
in a campaign against drugs that has focused mostly on cocaine.

From Maine to California, law enforcement authorities report
small-scale epidemics and a rising rate of overdoses from a
dangerously potent and cheap form of heroin.

While total heroin use in the United States has not risen
significantly, the drug is appealing to new middle-class users because
it can be smoked or snorted, rather than injected.

Evidence of the shift from coca to opium poppy can be found across
Latin America, which still produces just a fraction of the heroin made
worldwide but the vast majority reaching U.S. users, the authorities
say.

Most of the worldwide supply comes from places such as Afghanistan,
Myanmar and Pakistan.

The shift, experts and U.S. authorities fear, could present a new
challenge to aggressive U.S.-financed efforts to fight the illegal
drug trade with aerial plant-killing sprays.

Heroin may provide a potentially important new source of financing for
the leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups that depend on
drug money to wage war.