DEA BOSS SAYS TERROR HURTS WAR ON DRUGS

WASHINGTON - The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration says
that since Sept. 11's terrorist attacks, his agency has felt a major
impact as the FBI's resources are "spread thin'' and diverted from
investigating illegal drug cases to terrorism, even though the two
increasingly are related.

Asa Hutchinson, who resigned as a congressman from Arkansas to take
the DEA job Aug. 8, said yesterday, "Certainly, it's having an impact
when FBI agents are pulled off drugs for terrorism [investigations]
in Boca Raton [Fla.] and Boston," he said. "We have to make up the
slack.''

He said "discussions are under way'' on whether this will lead to a
"functional shift'' in allocation of resources at a time when the DEA
has begun a new assault on medical marijuana.

There have been conflicting reports of the war on terrorism's impact
on the drug war.

Mr. Hutchinson said terrorist cells in the United States have been
forced underground, preventing them from selling as many drugs to
fund terrorist organizations as they had been.

But last month the new head of the Customs Service, Robert Bonner,
said terrorism has replaced drug smuggling as the top priority of his
agency.

Hundreds of Customs officials have been redeployed from drug
investigations to provide 24-hour inspections at the Canadian border,
he said.

And as the war in Afghanistan continues, U.N. officials say Afghan
farmers are beginning to defy the ruling Taliban's year-old ban on
growing opium poppies, meaning there could be a global upsurge in
supplies of opium and heroin.

While Afghanistan is a source of about one-fifth of the heroin trade
in cities along the East Coast, Mr. Hutchinson said that
Afghanistan's drug trade clearly is used to finance terrorist
activities.

That is changing as U.S. anti-drug officials have focused more
sharply on terrorism's drug connection since the strikes.

In congressional testimony last month, Mr. Hutchinson said flatly,
"The sanctuary enjoyed by [Osama] bin Laden is based on the existence
of the Taliban's support for the drug trade. Both drug traffickers
and terrorists use many of the same methods to achieve their evil
ends."