Pubdate: Tue, 23 Oct 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Section: International
Author: Donald G. McNeil Jr.

HEROIN USERS IN EUROPE DON'T SEE PRICE DROP

PARIS, Oct. 23 -- The price of Afghan heroin has dropped, but police 
departments across Europe say that is unlikely to affect street prices much 
and has not done so to date.

British police intelligence sources said the price at the Afghanistan- 
Pakistan border had dropped since Sept. 11 to $200 a kilogram, or 2.2 
pounds, from $400. Europe gets the bulk of its heroin from Afghanistan 
while American dealers buy from Colombia, Mexico and Southeast Asia as well.

A spokesman for the British National Criminal Intelligence Service noted 
that the border price for heroin was $100 a kilo until July 2000 when the 
Taliban banned the cultivation of opium poppies. The price then shot up to 
$400.

Heroin base takes a year to 18 months to work its way through the middlemen 
and laboratories where it is purified and then diluted, packaged in small 
doses and sold by street dealers. Even then there is little sign that a 
change in base price has much affect on street sales.

The wholesale price in England is $15,000 to $20,000 a kilogram, "so the 
base price isn't that big a component," the British police representative 
said. "It's the Turkish gangs who control the supply routes that affect the 
price most."

As long as there is no competition, he said, the traffickers are more 
likely to rachet the price up.

Michel Bouchet, head of the French Interior Ministry's antidrug squad, 
predicted "a measurable fall, but not an important one" in the price of 
heroin in France as a result of the fighting in Afghanistan. Both the 
Taliban and their opponents in the Northern Alliance are assumed to be 
selling off stockpiles to raise cash for guns, he said. Neither he nor any 
other European police official could confirm those reports.

The price of a gram of heroin in France is $28 to $42, he said, and has 
been stable for two or three years. A kilogram is about $11,000.

In Britain, heroin is about $100 a gram on the street, down only 20 percent 
or so from its $120 price in 1993, when the national record-keeping began. 
Yet during that period, wholesale prices per kilo fell by more than half, 
to $20,000 or less from $40,000 or more. The police assume that the rapid 
expansion of the Afghan opium crops from 1997 to 2000 cut the wholesale 
price, but street dealers gouged their customers by not passing on the 
reduction.

A spokesman for the Berlin police declined to give prices for heroin there, 
but said there had been "no change in the last few weeks and no change in 
the amount of drugs on the market."

In the Netherlands, the price of a gram has remained steady at $75, said 
Rob van der Veen, an Amsterdam police spokesman. "There are no rumors that 
the price is affected by what's happening in Afghanistan," he said. "It's 
like oil -- it takes a while for the price to change."

In Sweden, which has more drug users than other Scandinavian countries, the 
price of a gram has remained steady at $80 since the 1980's, said Lars 
Bjurlinj of the National Criminal Intelligence Service. He denied published 
reports that it had been $120 a gram and had dropped to $50 recently.

Sweden's biggest worry, he said, is the opening of a new supply route full 
of higher-potency white heroin. In the past, most of Sweden's heroin came 
from Afghanistan via Iran or Turkey, the Balkans and northern Europe, and 
it arrived as lower-potency brown heroin base, which is more commonly 
smoked. Now a second route, from Afghanistan and nearby states through 
Russia and the Baltic countries, is delivering more of the refined white 
heroin hydrochloride, which can be injected.

"There are lots of hidden stocks in Afghanistan, and intelligence says 
they're moving it," Mr. Bjurlinj said. "But we don't see any effect here yet."

In Spain, neither Madrid nor Barcelona have seen changes in price or 
availability since Sept. 11, said Javier Hernandez, a spokesman for the 
National Drug Plan. He believes that the amount of heroin consumed in Spain 
has dropped by half in the last five years thanks to methadone and other 
treatments, but said street prices of about $58 a gram had remained steady.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens