WASHINGTON -- Booming Asian production of opium, from which heroin is made, has increased the supply of the drug in the United States and fueled fears of a rise in addiction.
"We have seen a sustained increase in the availability of heroin in the U.S. during the past five or six years," Ronald J. Caffrey, a top Drug Enforcement Administration official, told a congressional panel yesterday.
"The purity and potency of the U.S. heroin supply has also steadily increased," Caffrey added. "In the major metropolitan areas of the U.S., heroin is more affordable than it was a decade ago."
The chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, Rep. Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., warned of a "growing heroin crisis in this country."
Maryland has long been a major market for heroin, with an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 addicts, most in Baltimore. Law enforcement officials in Maryland say that about two years ago they began committing more resources to fighting heroin after detecting an increase in trafficking.
"The suppliers were once again becoming more organized and receiving more supplies and higher purities of heroin," Harvey E. Eisenberg, who heads a Baltimore-based regional federal drug task force, said in a recent interview.
"Heroin is readily available in the metropolitan area," said Jack Taylor, the agent in charge of the DEA's Baltimore office.
Federal officials can't quantify the surge in heroin supplies. U.S. Customs' seizures of heroin and opium jumped nationwide from 1989 to 1990.
Federal officials told the congressional committee that Asian production of opium increased sharply in recent years. They presented a pessimistic assessment of the United States' ability to stop production or interdict drugs before they reach American communities.
Burma, or Myanmar as the country now calls itself, produces enough opium to meet world demand by itself. The military regime there "has reached a political accommodation with some major narco-insurgent groups" and "does not control the territory in which the narcotics producers operate," said Melvyn Levitsky, assistant secretary of state for narcotics matters.
Thailand, Laos, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Mexico and Guatemala are other major sources of opium or centers of heroin refining and trafficking. Most of the heroin sold in Maryland and elsewhere in the Eastern U.S. originates in Southeast Asia, especially Burma, Thailand and Laos, the so-called "Golden Triangle," authorities say.
