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STEMMING THE FLOW ON THE HEROIN TRA
- Subject: STEMMING THE FLOW ON THE HEROIN TRA
- From: moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 06 Aug 1997 00:30:00
Subject: STEMMING THE FLOW ON THE HEROIN TRAIL
THE AGE 6/8/97
Stemming the flow on the heroin trail
DESPITE the billions of dollars spent every year
fighting the
drug war, the enemy is inexhaustible. Drugs may change
countries of origin and methods of transit, but
supplies keep
coming.
Even limited success can create other problems. US
pressure
against Colombian cocaine, for example, encouraged
Colombians to produce heroin, starting in 1991. And
to help
break into the US market, the Colombians dramatically
increased the purity of heroin and lowered prices.
This meant it
could be inhaled rather than injected.
This has created a new demand in the US where heroin
is back
in style after nearly two decades in which cocaine
was the
fashionable drug. The US Drug Enforcement Administration
estimates that there are about 600,000 hard-core
heroin users in
the US, and about two million who have tried the
drug. But there
is increasing nervousness that these figures may
rise sharply as a
new generation discovers "heroin chic".
President Bill Clinton has been critical of the
increasing use of
heroin chic poses in fashion photographs. The other
side of the
picture is showing up with a doubling of heroin
admissions to
hospital emergency rooms since 1990. Even so, American
heroin consumption remains a small part of the world
market -
about 5 per cent.
Most opium is consumed in the source countries or
exported to
Europe. The DEA estimates worldwide illicit opium
production
at 4157 metric tonnes in 1995, up from 3409 tonnes
in 1994.
More than 2500 tonnes came from South-East Asia, in
particular Burma, which was responsible for about 90
per cent
of the regional production. The conversion ratio of
opium to
heroin is about 10 to one and the increase in opium
production is
showing no sign of levelling off.
There are four main areas of global supply:
South-East Asia, including production in Laos, Thailand,
Cambodia and Vietnam.
South-West Asia and the Middle East, including
Afghanistan,
Turkey, Pakistan and Lebanon. Much of this goes to
Europe.
Mexico, with cheap but low-quality supplies of black
tar and
brown heroin destined almost entirely for the West
and southern
states of the US.
South America, especially Colombia.
The latest State Department report on international
narcotics
control says Australia has the potential to be a
transit point for
US-bound heroin and for cocaine destined for
South-East Asia
but says there is no evidence of this. The DEA, in
contrast,
believes that there is at least some evidence of
Australian links.
The DEA includes Australia in a list of transit
countries in the
region and says that according to the Australian
Federal Police
Nigerian traffickers have recruited Australians to
deliver heroin
to the US.
The importance of Nigerian traffickers in the
South-East Asian
heroin trade is an oddity of the cycles of the
marketing and
distribution systems that straddle the world.
According to the DEA, the Nigerian groups are formed
on tribal
lines and often controlled from Lagos via
telephones. They use a
large stable of couriers smuggling one to
10-kilogram quanties of
heroin per airline trip and use aliases and loose
stuctures.
By contrast, the ethnic Chinese gangs - the biggest
distributors
of South-East Asian heroin - use mainly commercial
cargo to
transport large quantities of heroin. Containers go
through
several countries or the documentation is falsified
to disguise the
trail. Most of the region's heroin is produced along the
Burma-Thai and Burma-China borders.
The US had hoped that the "surrender" of the
principal Burmese
drug lord Khun Sa and his army at the beginning of
last year
would improve matters, but it seems this was largely
a public
relations exercise and he has continued narcotic
operations. At
the same time, Thai efforts to stop Thailand being a
transit route
mean that China is increasingly being used to move
Burmese
heroin, and there are reports of increasing amounts
of drugs
from Vietnam and Laos.
There is still little evidence of production in
China although the
DEA is concerned this may change.
The State Department singles out Malaysia as a key
transit
country. It also says that as interdiction efforts
in the region
become more sophisticated, the attractiveness of
Indonesia as a
transit point for drugs going to Australia, Europe
and the US is
likely to grow.