Pubdate: Sat, 10 Mar 2001
Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
Copyright: 2001 The Sun-Times Co.
Contact:  401 N. Wabash, Chicago IL 60611
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Author: Will Weissert

ANTI-COCAINE EFFORTS ALLOW HEROIN TO THRIVE

BOGOTA, Colombia--Washington's $1.3 billion war on Colombian cocaine 
has had an unexpected consequence: scaled back efforts to stop the 
flourishing heroin trade.

Strikes against poppy plantations in the Andes have been on hold 
since December because airplanes and helicopters used in aerial 
eradication missions were reassigned to the U.S.-financed push 
against coca crops.

U.S. officials are calling the suspension temporary. But the halt is 
frustrating Colombian police and angering some U.S. lawmakers 
concerned about increasing heroin production.

Colombia is the world's leading cocaine producer and now exports more 
heroin than Thailand and Pakistan. The country supplies 70 percent of 
an expanding U.S. heroin market, the U.S. Drug Enforcement 
Administration says.

At a hearing in Washington last week, Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.) 
raised questions about the poppy suspension. He warned that "more 
American youngsters caught up in the current heroin crisis here at 
home will die needlessly for lack of an effective U.S. heroin 
strategy directed at Colombia."

DEA Administrator Donnie Marshall said successful anti-heroin efforts 
in Asia and years of battling cocaine in Colombia had pushed 
Colombian traffickers into a booming U.S. heroin market.

Colombia still produces about 100 times as much cocaine as heroin. 
But U.S. heroin use has doubled in the last five years, while casual 
cocaine use has dropped 70 percent in the last decade, the White 
House Office of National Drug Control Policy reports.

Concern about heroin could dampen the enthusiasm over what U.S. 
officials are calling a successful start to coca eradication under 
Washington's $1.3 billion aid package. The United States is providing 
troop training and combat helicopters to escort crop dusters over 
southern coca plantations often guarded by armed rebels.

By early February, about 62,000 acres--almost a fifth of Colombia's 
estimated coca crop--had been sprayed, U.S. officials said.

Gen. Gustavo Socha, head of Colombia's anti-narcotics police force, 
complained the aggressive attack is undercutting the war on heroin. 
Whereas his forces wiped out a record 22,700 acres of opium plants 
last year, Socha said he'll be lucky to kill more than 15,000 acres 
this year--a drop of more than a third.
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