Source: The Dallas Morning The new heroin 
Mexico must crack down on cash crop 

07/14/97

Business has been booming with Mexico, but tragically it includes a 
sinister product that is corrupting both countries: a more potent 
heroin.

Mexico now produces up to 30 percent of the heroin used in the United 
States. In Texas, the country's market share is an estimated 80 to 90 
percent, owing to the 900mile TexasMexico border and the millions of 
crossings that occur there each year.

Most of the heroin comes from three states: Chihuahua, Durango and 
Sinaloa. Each is close to the Pacific Ocean and the U.S. border, which 
eases smuggling into the United States. Each contains part of the long 
Sierra Madre mountain range, where the opium poppies, from which heroin 
is extracted, grow.

Mexican heroin is distinguishable by its dark color and texture  hence, 
the names black tar and brown heroin. It is less refined than heroin 
from other big producing countries in South America and South Asia, and 
therefore less potent.

But Mexican heroin's potency is increasing, as its producers strive to 
compete better with Colombian and Asian producers for the lucrative U.S. 
market. In 1993, the U.S. spent $7 billion on heroin. Several decades 
ago, the Mexican drug's average purity was only 3 to 6 percent; today, 
it is about 30 percent pure, or almost double its 1991 average.

Mexican heroin enters Texas clandestinely by boat through Houston or 
other Gulf Coast ports. It comes across on commercial and private 
aircraft. And it crosses by land on human couriers known as "mules," who 
pack it tightly against their bodies to avoid detection or haul it in 
their stomachs in wrapped, sausageshaped packages that they have 
swallowed.

Shutting down the trade at the border would be difficult at best, 
although more random searches would help. Five thousand Mexican trucks 
enter the United States daily. Fiftytwo million vehicles crossed the 
border in 1995.

The sheer difficulty of eliminating the crossborder trafficking of 
heroin is one big reason the joint U.S.Mexican antinarcotics strategy 
necessarily emphasizes destroying the drug before it is ever extracted 
from the brilliantly colored poppies in the Sierra Madre. Last year, the 
Mexican government eradicated 19,500 acres of opium poppies, leaving 
approximately 12,600 acres of harvestable cultivation, according to the 
U.S. State Department. Left unchecked, the 1996 crop could have produced 
14 tons of heroin. Through eradication, potential production was reduced 
to six tons.

As the Mexican government has gotten better at eradicating big poppy 
fields, growers have gotten more sophisticated, sowing small fields 
known as plantillas, and using natural foliage to camouflage their crops 
and processing laboratories. Growers have also responded by expanding 
cultivation, moving south along the Sierra Madre into other Pacific 
coast states and even into the Central American country of Guatemala.

But interdiction of heroin is still a big part of any sound drug control 
strategy, as is destruction of the Mafialike organizations in Mexico's 
northern states that control the product's export and wholesale 
distribution in the southwestern United States.

Reducing U.S. demand also must be a big part of any solution, as 
President Clinton explicitly recognized during his May visit to Mexico's 
capital. The 97page "U.S.Mexico BiNational Drug Threat Assessment" 
released by both countries during Mr. Clinton's visit appropriately 
recognized the United States' growing misuse of heroin. It also 
acknowledged the need for "a comprehensive, longterm strategy to 
reduce, and ultimately eliminate all aspects of the problem."

A comprehensive solution demands highlevel attention to the problem. 
Aware that growing tension over drugs in general was damaging their 
bilateral relations without making much of a dent in the problem, the 
United States and Mexico last year responded by forming a cabinetlevel 
group to address the issue. The increased cooperation made possible by 
the socalled High Level Contact Group was almost ruined this winter 
after Mexico arrested its top antidrug enforcer for allegedly taking 
payoffs from drug lords and the U.S. Congress responded by nearly 
overturning Mr. Clinton's decision to certify Mexico as a full ally in 
the war on drugs.

Despite the corruption that pervades Mexican law enforcement and parts 
of Mexico's government, the High Level Contact Group is a good idea. The 
war against the new heroin is too important to be left to antidrug 
enforcers alone. It requires political attention at the highest levels.

The United States should continue to encourage Mexico to destroy as many 
poppies as possible. To that end, Mr. Clinton is right to have promised 
Mexico everything possible to help it fight all the drug scourges that 
afflict it.

Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo has declared drug trafficking to be 
Mexico's top national security threat. The United States can do no less 
than to support his efforts with money, materiel and, on the domestic 
front, education, treatment and tough law enforcement action.

Mexican heroin won't go away by itself. It needs a strong shove.

Fourth in a series