Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
From: [catalyst remailer] at [netcom.com]
Subject: A thousand tons of heroin....
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 1994 00:01:23 -0700

This isn't a cottage industry :-) ! Pretty soon the entire world economy
and the latest stock market fluctuations will march to its tune.

        WASHINGTON (AP) -- A government report warned Monday of a
possible U.S. heroin epidemic in the 1990s and said traffickers
from Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America are poised to cash in.
        ``In the past five years, there has been a steady increase in
the flow and purity of heroin to the U.S., suggesting that the
taste for the drug is growing,'' the State Department report said.
        It said this was a logical consequence of more than a decade of
cocaine abuse since it is normal for a depressant drug such as
heroin to succeed a stimulant such as cocaine.
        The implications are serious, the report said, because heroin
can hold its prey for decades while the staying power of cocaine is
usually limited to five years.
        Economics also are contributing to the revival of heroin.
        ``While at U.S. street prices, cocaine and heroin are
competitive, at the wholesale level heroin has a strong
advantage,'' the report said.
        ``With the likelihood that heroin will be to the 1990s what
cocaine was to the 1980s, Latin American trafficking organizations
are poised to cash in on a heroin epidemic,'' the report said.
        Colombia was cited as a country where cocaine traffickers are
diversifying into opium and heroin. Incipient poppy cultivation
also is under way in Peru and Ecuador.
        It added that heroin brokers in Southeast and Southwest Asia
collaborate with Nigerian drug enterprises to emulate the marketing
success of the Medellin and Cali cocaine cartels.
        On Friday, President Clinton added Nigeria to the list of
countries he says are not cooperating in U.S. anti-drug efforts.
The other countries, held over from last year, are Burma, Iran and
Syria.
        Countries on the list are prohibited from receiving U.S. backing
in their requests for assistance from international lending
institutions. There are other economic penalties as well.
        Elaborating on the Nigerian role at a briefing Monday, Assistant
Secretary of State Robert Gelbard said Nigeria has become a major
source of trafficking around the world,
        ``Nigerian trafficking organizations have become one of the most
extraordinary, organized phenomena of carrying heroin and cocaine
both into the United States and Europe,'' Gelbard said.
        He said 35 percent to 40 percent of all heroin coming into the
United States is brought by Nigerians.
        The report pointed out that a major difficulty in controlling
heroin at the source is that the greatest opium producers are
countries where the U.S. government has limited political leverage
or physical presence.
        In this category the report cited Burma, where the U.S.
diplomatic presence is limited because of human-rights violations.
        Burma was described as the world's largest opium producer and
supplies perhaps 60 per cent of the U.S. heroin market.
        ``With an estimated potential production in 1993 of 2,575 metric
tons of opium gum, it alone could satisfy most of the world's
heroin demand,'' the report said. Afghanistan, with an estimated
685 tons was a distant second followed by Laos (180 tons) and
Pakistan (140 tons).