War on Drugs

Mexico's Quality Heroin Muscles Out Asia

Technological Progress in the Battle Against Needles

Mexican drug cartels, long regarded as peddlers of cheap, low-grade heroin that accounted for only a tiny portion of the U.S. market, are now producing some of the world's most potent heroin and are seizing control of a rapidly growing share of the U.S. heroin business, according to Mexican and U.S. law enforcement officials.

Mexico has become the second-largest source of heroin used in the United States, and the purity of the Mexican-produced drug has increased sixfold in the past two years in what U.S. law enforcement and health authorities describe as alarming trends.

Colombian and U.S. officials said the changes are tied to an emerging alliance between the Colombian heroin trafficking organization of Ivan Urdinola and Mexican drug smuggling organizations that are learning how to produce more potent heroin. In a dramatic shift in global heroin trafficking patterns, Colombian and Mexican drug cartels largely have taken over heroin distribution in the United States from Asian organizations, whose share of the American market – based on seizures by law enforcement authorities – has plunged from 90 percent to 28 percent since 1992.

U.S. officials say the shift in the heroin supply coincides with a disturbing trend in drug consumption in the United States. While the number of cocaine users has dropped significantly in recent years, the number of heroin users has risen from 500,000 to 600,000 over the past two years.

Part of the surge in heroin use, experts say, is driven by the new purity of the drug. Instead of having to be injected directly into the bloodstream, as the low-purity heroin traditionally produced in Mexico required, today's more potent drug can be smoked or inhaled like cocaine. The ability to use heroin without injection and the corresponding fear of HIV infection from dirty needles has made heroin more popular, narcotics experts say.

The Colombians, who began trafficking in heroin six years ago, learned how to refine opium latex into heroin from Thai and Cambodian experts. Through the years, Colombians have refined the process to make their heroin up to 90 percent pure, and some are passing on their skills to Mexican heroin traffickers.

Until two years ago, U.S. authorities say, Mexican cartels produced only a low grade of heroin called "black tar," which was about 7 to 20 percent pure. But the purity of Mexican heroin has since climbed to an average of 50 to 60 percent, with some seizures recorded at 76 percent purity, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) figures.

Mexican drug mafias, which already have taken over many U.S. cocaine distribution routes once dominated by Colombian cartels, have substantially expanded their reach and control virtually all heroin sales west of the Mississippi River, according to the U.S. anti-drug officials. DEA officials estimate that 42 percent of all the heroin smuggled into the United States is produced in Mexico – 4.5 tons a year, compared with the six tons of Colombian heroin that reach the United States each year.

Seizures of Mexican heroin in the United States quadrupled to 20 percent of all the heroin confiscated by U.S. law enforcement officials between 1995 and 1996, one of the first signs of the Mexican cartels' increasing role, according to anti-drug agencies. Mexican heroin seizures have continued to rise, authorities said.

"International organized crime groups from Mexico are directly supplying American communities with high-purity heroin," DEA Administrator Thomas A. Constantine told a congressional hearing in March. "With the drug's low cost and deadly levels of purity, this is clearly cause for concern."

U.S. authorities discovered the dramatic rise in purity levels of Mexican heroin when 14 teenagers and young adults in one Dallas suburb died in 1996 after using "uncut" Mexican heroin so pure that it exploded in their systems like a bomb.

Colombian officials said it is not clear why the Colombians are sharing their expertise with the Mexicans, who in some cases have become rivals in the cocaine trade.

"What we know is that the heroin trade is proliferating as a business, and that groups in Colombia, based in Pereira, are making the contacts with the Mexicans," a senior Colombian intelligence official said. "It is a growing alliance, but we don't yet know what is driving it."

The hardest evidence of the new alliance emerged in October, when Mexican officials arrested two Colombians and a Mexican near Durango, Mexico. The authorities discovered a heroin lab and confiscated 352 pounds of opium gum, used to make heroin, and just over two pounds of morphine.

The city in northern Mexico is in the heart of the area controlled by one of Mexico's oldest drug trafficking organizations, the Herrera family. The Colombians told law enforcement officials they worked for the Urdinola organization, which controls heroin distribution in the New York City area.

The increase in Mexican heroin sales in the United States comes even as Mexican authorities have made slight increases in the amount of opium fields destroyed. U.S. authorities also estimate that the total area under opium poppy cultivation has decreased from 32,000 acres in 1996 to 29,600 acres last year.

The amount of heroin seized in the United States has increased steadily in recent years, a sign that more heroin is reaching the United States, according to DEA officials. Seizures by all federal U.S. law enforcement agents grew from 2,569 pounds in 1995 to 3,381 pounds in 1996. Incomplete figures from 1997 record seizures of 3,003 pounds.

The New York Times, June 2, 1998