News
Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 3, 1996
Colombian
Heroin a Major Threat:
62% Seized in the United States Originates in South America
South American (primarily
Colombian) heroin now accounts for a staggering 62% of heroin seized domestically
in 1995. This is a dramatic shift; in 1989, most (96%) of the heroin seized
in the United States originated in Southeast or Southwest Asia. By 1993,
when the DEA developed procedures to identify South American heroin, South
American heroin accounted for just 15% of seizures. From 1993 to 1994
the South American heroin seizures doubled, and accounted for an astonishing
32% of the heroin seized. According to DEA Administrator Thomas Constantine,
Last year, nearly a third of the heroin seized in the United States
came from South America. Today, just one year later, the amount has nearly
doubled again with 62% of heroin seized traced to South America.*
Independent
Colombian traffickers have moved into heroin and this is no accidentas
I said last year, its a shrewd marketing decision made to capitalize
on the increased profits that can be derived from heroin trafficking.
Right now they are positioning themselves to be central players in the
Western Hemisphere heroin market by the year 2000. They control cocaine
and they are looking to control heroin. Crack cocaine has devastated families
and neighborhoods across the country. South American heroin has the potential
of doing the same, he added.
The DEAs Domestic
Monitor Program (DMP), which tracks price, purity and availability through
analysis of street level purchases also shows an increase in the availability
of this high-purity heroin, particularly in the Northeast in Boston,
Newark, New York City and Philadelphia. The availability of this high-purity
heroin directly parallels the increase in overdoses and deaths in the
region.
Taking a snapshot
of these northeastern cities alone for 1995, South American heroin accounted
for over 9 of every 10 DMP purchases with an average street level purity
of 71 percent, almost 30 percent higher than the average heroin street
level purity nationwide. During the first 6 months of 1995, the nationwide
average purity for retail heroin from all sources was 39.9%, much higher
than the average of 7% reported a decade ago, and considerably higher
than the 26.6% recorded in 1991.
The significant rise
in average purity corresponds directly to the increase in availability
of high-purity South American heroin. Philadelphia has had the highest
average purity for DMP purchases for the last three years running (74.7%
in 1993, 64.3% in 1994 and 70.9 % in 1995.) In addition, all the street
level heroin analyzed in Philadelphia, New Orleans, and San Juan was of
South American origin, and for the first time almost all the heroin analyzed
by the DEA in Miami, traditionally a cocaine market, has been of South
American origin.
According to Constantine,
Chemical signatures, purity, market share, and 'Asian versus Colombian
heroin' may seem dry and technical. Its the human statistics which
really tell the story. Drug Abuse Warning Network figures released Tuesday
show a 19% increase in heroin incidents in the nations emergency
rooms. Heroin overdoses by rock musicians, young stock brokers and models
capture todays headlines. But were also hearing about mothers
of 'perfect college students who never did drugs watching as their
brain-dead daughters die, and about the bodies of two 18-year old Orlando
young men dumped in an apartment to die by their pusher when they became
ill. In the Orlando area alone during the past 15 months heroin is suspected
in the deaths of 13 people, five of whom were just teenagers.
High-purity heroin
is particularly dangerous because new users, who often fear needles and
intravenous injections initially, can begin using by snorting or smoking
the high-purity heroin. Smoking heroin is equally addictive and more expensive.
Once addicted snorting or smoking no longer produces the desired effect.
Soon the users resort to injection, risking skin abscesses, hepatitis,
AIDS-producing HIV, bacterial endocarditis and overdose.
Data collected in
hospital emergency rooms, police departments, courts, schools, treatment
programs and on the street show tragically that heroin consumption in
the United States is on the rise. Heroin has become more affordable
and more glamorous. We are seeing more people snorting heroin, or using
heroin coupled with crack or other forms of cocaine and we are at risk
of developing a younger generation of heroin addicts. For years weve
seen a hardcore older population of approximately 600,000 heroin addicts.
Today we are seeing 11th and 12th graders turning to heroin. These `initiates
are, in all likelihood, at the outset of a long, downward spiral into
hardcore addiction or death.
The DEA recognized
the reemerging heroin threat two years ago and developed a five-year strategy
to address the problem. This major initiative includes new agents and
resources as well as a redeployment of existing assets and a refocused
effort in heroin investigations. Two weeks ago, the DEAs New York
Field Division announced the arrest of 21 defendants from the Ortiz/Cintron
organization in a joint investigation initiated in January by the New
York Drug Enforcement Task Force. This group was distributing approximately
50,000 to 75,000 ten-dollar bags of heroin per week, identified under
several brand names including Fuji Power and Far Beyond
Imagination" with purity levels measured as high as 94%. Over the
next two years we will commit over $11 million to domestic heroin enforcement
and additional resources internationally to fight heroin trafficking,
Constantine concluded.
Notes:
*
These figures are based upon DEAs 1995 Heroin Signature Program
(HSP) test results published earlier this month. Each year an in-depth
chemical analysis is performed on 600 to 800 samples taken from heroin
seizures and purchases made in the United States. As a result of the signature
analysis, DEA chemists are able to associate the heroin sample with a
heroin manufacturing process unique to a geographic source area. During
1995, more than 860 seized samples underwent signature analysis at DEAs
Special Testing and Research Laboratory in McLean, Virginia.
**
DEAs El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) reports an almost 6-fold
increase in the number of Colombian couriers who were arrested smuggling
heroin into the U.S. in the four-year period from 1991 to 1995, and more
than a 10-fold increase of all couriers smuggling Colombian heroin into
the United States during the same period.
*The signature for South American heroin was developed in July 1993.
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