WAR BRINGING OPIUM TO THE MASSES

Supply Coming From Afghanistan

AMERICA MIGHT have chased Osama bin Laden out of the mountains of
Afghanistan with three months of bombing raids, but the hills are alive
with still another scourge - opium.

Allied forces in Afghanistan have dismantled the Taliban, but at the same
time effectively eliminated any oversight on illegal drug activity in that
country.

Federal drug experts say they're certain that the recent fall of the
fundamentalist Islamic government is directly tied to a glut of inexpensive
opium spewing from the country.

Those experts say it's just a matter of time before the United States, and
particularly large cities such as Philadelphia, see a "tidal wave" of cheap
dope, adding millions in law enforcement and treatment to a terrorist war
already costing this country $2 billion a month.

Drug Enforcement Administration officials in Philadelphia say they have no
evidence yet that illegal opium or its derivative, heroin, on the streets
here came as a direct result of the Taliban ouster.

But one occasional drug user in Philadelphia claims he's sampled some of
the highly pure stuff for which Afghanistan is famous.

"It's dark red, the color of dried blood, and it has a sweet smell," said a
Center City man, who requested anonymity.

"It's ironic - we send them bombs, and they send us opium."

Before the Taliban clamp-down a year ago, Afghanistan had supplied 75
percent of the world's opium. Most is processed into morphine and heroin
before it leaves that part of the world.

Many Afghans, however, were stockpiling the opiate in hopes of driving up
the price, officials said. Then came Sept. 11.

"After Sept. 11, they started dumping opium on the open market, and prices
dropped to rock-bottom," said Will Glaspy, spokesman for the Drug
Enforcement Agency in Washington, D.C.

A kilogram of opium that previously sold for about $700 now could be had
for $30, officials said.

"They were trying to get rid of the stuff before [an American] bomb got
dropped on it," Glaspy said.

The bargain-basement sale of the opium only increased as the war ensued,
experts said.

"With the Taliban gone, there was no controlling authority in Afghanistan,
and the U.S. forces sent there frankly had more urgent things to tend to,
like chase down Osama bin Laden," said Tim Riley, director of
communications for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"As soon as I heard the Taliban had fallen, I thought about the likelihood
that [allied authorities] were going to be winking at all the drug
trafficking," said Dr. Robert Forman, assistant professor of psychiatry at
the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and director of technology
transfer at Penn's Treatment Research Institute.

Officials were quick to point out that most of the opium from Afghanistan
ends up in Europe and Russia. Most of the heroin, from the same family as
opium, in the United States originates in Colombia.

But some said the increasing desire to sell the drug will eventually lead
to the United States, easily the biggest consumer of illegal drugs in the
world, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"It's entirely plausible to think that new supply routes to the United
States will be established," Riley said. "We haven't been part of the
Afghan poppy pipeline, but that might change."

Currently, Afghanistan's huge opium crop is imported, along with the crops
from Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey, to Southeast Asia, according to the DEA.

The portion that crosses the Pacific to North America is distributed in the
Northeast - particularly Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore and Washington -
certain West Coast cities, and some Midwestern cities, including Chicago
and Detroit.

Experts say Philadelphia is home to the purest heroin coming in to this
country.

And there's even more bad news, federal drug officials said. It's only
going to get worse.

With Afghanistan in chaos, new crops of the drug are being planted in
record numbers.

"They're planting poppy plants like crazy," said Riley. "By the springtime
[when opium is usually harvested], there's going to be a virtual tidal wave
of this stuff."

And if just a fraction of that reaches Philadelphia, it would further
cripple an already overburdened system of treatment for heroin and opiate
addicts here, experts said.

"My biggest concern is the lack of availability of treatment," said Dr.
George Woody, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania
Medical School and a 30-year veteran of drug addiction treatment.

"All of the places that treat this kind of addiction have waiting lists,
and this would only aggravate the problem."

Federal officials don't seem to have a clear plan to deal with the problem
both here and abroad. In published reports, some are advocating a one-time
buy back of the spring crop for impoverished Afghan poppy farmers.

But others want to rely mostly on law enforcement.

The war in Afghanistan is already costing the United States between $1
billion and $2 billion per month, according to estimates from the Center
for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit think tank in Washington.

In addition, about $3 billion is spent on drug treatment annually in the
U.S., part of the $35 billion to $45 billion drug policy budget according
to federal figures. And about $300 billion is spent spent on arresting,
prosecuting and incarcerating addicts. *