Opium

by Martin Booth

  Since 1985, there had been some decline in heroin addiction in Britain, perhaps due to government advertising and the AIDS epidemic, but it is beginning to rise again. One place where addiction has soared is Jersey, in the Channel Islands. As an offshore tax haven, Jersey is attractive to dealers for there is more disposable income than in mainland Britain: addicts, therefore, have to pay three times the usual British street price. Addict numbers registered for detoxification have risen from 15 in 1993 to 60 in 1994 whilst there are estimated to be 400 addicts in all on the tiny island. They are supplied from England by either couriers or mail. An interesting aspect of the growth is that it is amongst young professionals not just transient youths. The usual factors claimed to lead to addiction – of social degradation or poverty – are absent: Jersey has no unemployment, no poor housing, no student population and no ethnic groups. The cause of growth in addiction is due to cultural causes rather than traditional need.

  Europe has become a trafficker’s paradise. With national barriers being opened, not only have easy trade and tourism been facilitated but so too has every crime from the amateur bootlegging of alcohol to computer fraud, terrorism and drug running. Traffickers are making full use of this convenience, as is indicated by the fact that of British heroin seizures made in 1993, over 55 per cent were from EU countries. The figure for 1995 is expected to be around or even above 70 per cent.

  Whilst First World countries are the primary destinations of heroin, practically every country is somehow involved in the game. With extensive government corruption and organised crime, Nigeria is notorious as the nerve centre of Africa’s drug trade: consequently, it has the highest heroin addiction rate in the continent. Corruption is, in fact, so endemic it has prompted an American Congressman to declare, ‘We gave some sniffer dogs to Nigerian customs, but it’s a poisoned chalice. Dogs cannot be corrupted. They are a permanent danger for any custom authorities any time a minister’s wife walks near them.’ Mostly established in Lagos, Nigerian trafficking gangs, which are often tribally based, import from both ‘golden’ regions, re-exporting to Europe and the USA where Nigerians control a number of urban distribution networks, their methods of smuggling being highly adaptable to prevalent enforcement strategies. Whilst a decade ago, Nigerian nationals were frequently couriers, today they are less likely to be involved as smugglers: the world’s anti-narcotics agencies have come to recognise them. Now they employ other black West Africans, white and black South Africans, Europeans and Americans, who usually transport small amounts on intercontinental passenger flights, carrying them by ingestion. Ghana is a particularly popular source of smuggling mules for Nigerian gangs: there is no shortage of volunteers for a trip earns the mule US$2000, forty times the national average monthly wage. Often, the mule/trafficker contract is more than financial by involving a witch-doctor’s ceremony in which the mule swears not to disclose his employer who, in turn, guarantees to look after the mule’s family if he is caught. The modus operandum involves the old trick of flooding flights with couriers, accepting customs officers will be over-stretched, apprehending one or two whilst the rest escape detection. A newer development by Nigerian gangs is the transportation of large amounts concealed in commercial maritime cargoes.

  Other African countries which are transit stations include Chad, Zambia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Egypt and Liberia, enforcement of drug legislation being lax in most because of budgetary restraints and corruption. In some countries, such as Zambia, poor Africans obtain passports which they then sell to Nigerian smugglers. This scam is now on the increase in South Africa where the lifting of post-apartheid sanctions is opening the country up as both a possible transit point and a potential heroin market: the squalid, crowded townships of South Africa, already governed by criminal gangs, is a market almost begging for exploitation. Indeed, heroin is already appearing in the townships where it is nicknamed ‘flower’: pushers selling it disguise it in small bunches of blossoms displayed on roadside stalls or on offer in the shebeens or beer halls.

  In most African nations, corruption is rampant with officials deeply involved in the drugs trade: in some instances, even governments have been accused of dealing. A Zambian minister had to resign in 1994 following allegations of drug trafficking whilst substantial South American drug money investments have been placed in Equatorial Guinea, a member of a South American cartel (on the DEA wanted list since 1993) travelling on a diplomatic passport issued by the Guinean government. The son of the president was accused of trafficking and expelled from France in 1990, only to be caught a year later in Miami with a suitcase containing US$10 million.

  South America, more often associated with cocaine, also increasingly grows poppies and produces heroin. By 1992, Colombia had 20,000 hectares of land cleared for poppies: the year before, it had less than 2000. This places Colombia third behind Burma and Laos in land acreage available for poppy farming. The Colombian climate is ideal for poppies and it is possible to grow three (even four) crops per annum: in the ‘golden’ regions, only one can be obtained.

  The Colombian opium industry is being run with all the efficiency of the cocaine industry. Traffickers provide peasant farmers with seed and train them to collect opium. When the business began the farmers, unsure of the financial return, grew poppies alongside maize, onions or potatoes: partly, they were hedging their bets and partly they were camouflaging their crops but now many exclusively raise poppies.

  Colombian opium gum yields are not yet as good as Asian because, although the plants produce more pods, these are small and the farmers are not yet experienced in scoring and gum collection. In time, of course, this will change and seems immune government intervention. Aerial spraying with herbicides is difficult because of the hilly terrain in which the farmers live, where the weather is frequently too dangerous for flying. When spraying is successful, the farmers merely dig up the crop and replant: they can afford to be so wasteful with three annual harvests. Aircraft also come under fire from traffickers and bandits who extort protection money from poppy farmers, grow their own crops of poppies and, in some places, process opium into morphine base with a percentage of poppy cultivation conducted under the auspices of guerrillas of the Communist Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces and the National Liberation Army.

  The first Colombian heroin laboratory was found in 1992. It was not producing a high quantity of heroin but the operators had been trained by heroin chemists from Asia. Colombian heroin production is now increasing and is starting to impact itself upon world markets.

  Many of the Colombian traffickers are small-time operators – there are estimated to be 3000 independent drug trafficking groups operating in Colombia – who have worked with cocaine in the past, but they are being increasingly financed and organised or absorbed by the Cali and, to a much lesser extent, Medellin cartels, consortia of drug barons who, though famous for cocaine, are now heavily involved in the highly lucrative heroin business.

  The Medellin cartel – based in the city of Medellin and formerly run by the infamous Pablo Escobar who was killed by the Colombian security police in December 1993 – is in decline but the Cali cartel, which is far more powerful and wealthy than Escobar’s organisation ever was, is in the ascendant. The Cali cartel, with brothers Gilberto (who was arrested in June 1995) and Miguel Rodriguez-Orejuela as two of its major figures, ‘owns’ large numbers of judges, police, military personnel and politicians. Some members of the ruling Liberal Party came under criticism in 1994 for allegedly taking money from the Cali cartel to finance their election campaign and it has been alleged that the Colombian government has secretly negotiated the arrests of certain drug barons to appease the USA, which only ‘conditionally certified’ Colombia as a combatant nation in the war on drugs in March 1995. A number of drug barons had already stated privately that they were prepared to accept short gaol sentences on the condition, upon release, they could retain their wealth: Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela, if convicted, is likely to serve not more than
nine years in prison. The Cali cartel handles 80 per cent of the world’s cocaine, with strongly established links to the American Mafia and other criminal organisations. One group within the Cali cartel controls large tracts of opium farms. It requires no crystal ball to see how their involvement in heroin will develop. South American heroin is starting to capture a large part of the US and European markets. Cocaine distribution and smuggling networks are already in place to handle heroin and Colombia is set to become a significant world heroin source.

  Other South and Central American countries are sure to jump on the heroin bandwagon. Although American government-aided eradication projects wiped the poppy out of Guatemala in 1992, cultivation is underway again in remote, narrow valleys beyond the reach of crop-spraying aircraft, under the guidance of Mexican criminals who are behind the resurgence of Guatemalan cultivation. Venezuela, Peru, Brazil and Ecuador also seem likely to increase their numbers of opium poppies.

  Many countries in Central America and the Caribbean – even those where poppies are not grown – are involved in the trade: there are now so many drugs in the region’s countries they are collectively classified by customs agencies as a ‘source country’ in their own right. Belize was infiltrated by drug dealers within a decade of independence from Britain whilst Puerto Rico has become a major gateway for drugs entering the USA, San Juan having developed into a hub of trafficking, money laundering and dubious South American investments: in April 1995, the FBI busted a ring which had invested US$80 million of drugs-related money primarily in the tourist industry.

  Cuba’s involvement in drugs (primarily cocaine) goes back many years, originating in the government’s ideology. From early on, it was Castro’s policy to aid and abet traffickers in order to subvert American society, finance arms and bankroll Latin American revolutionaries. From around 1975 onwards, Cuba commenced the systematic exploitation of any chink it could see in the American armour, narcotics forming a conspicuous part of Cuban policy. An alliance was made in 1975 with the Colombian drug cartels whereby Cuba would turn a blind eye to vessels carrying drugs through her territorial waters, would furnish refuelling services and provide a flag of convenience if required. Aircraft were similarly catered for. Needless to say, these services had to be paid for in hard currency. Instances also occurred where cocaine was refined at Cuban military bases, protected by military security. Today, Cuban trafficking groups are involved in money laundering and drug trafficking in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Haiti, with heroin being discovered in containers of flowers and being run by Dominican nationals.

  The Sandinista regime, which took power in Nicaragua in 1979, ran a drugs-for-arms business which also obtained much needed hard currency, particularly US dollars. They were not alone. The CIA used narcotics sales as one means of obtaining financial support for the right-wing, anti-Sandinista Contras, this forming a substantial part of US covert operations in Central America. The part of the CIA in such American overseas policy decisions was more than adequately summed up by one of the world’s most successful money launderers who observed in 1987, in respect of the Nicaraguan affair, that drug barons outside the USA were immensely powerful and influential. He stated that if the CIA wanted to meddle in the affairs of foreign nations there was no way they could do so without meeting – and probably associating – with drug dealers and their masters.

  Mexico, which at present has a low but growing addict population, is central to much of the region’s heroin. This is despite extensive enforcement and crop eradication, the result of which has driven poppy cultivation largely out of the mountains of the Sierra Madre and into the south-west of the country where, due to the weather and new farming methods, more than one annual crop is possible. Most Mexican heroin is ‘black tar’ heroin which is quick and easy to make, being manufactured directly from raw opium in small, mobile refining units which travel with the farmers as they harvest their crop. The product is on its way to the USA within several days. Such heroin is usually injected and can have a consistency as sticky as roofing tar or be hard like coal. It is most frequently sold by the ‘piece’ (a Mexican ounce) which weighs 25 grams. It may also be sold in a brown, powdered form known as ‘Mexican brown’ or ‘Bugger’.

  In the last decade, Mexico has become the major entry point for drugs into the USA. The traffic earns an estimated $30 billion a year in foreign exchange for Mexico: it could not achieve this without help from well-placed officials. Corruption has shifted from local police (who are often accused of trafficking) to the highest echelons of government, with charges of complicity between drug kingpins and top government officials being made nation-wide. The charges and their associated scandals may involve more than money for narcotic connections have been alleged in several high-profile murders. To address this situation, one of the conditions set by Washington on a $20 billion aid package granted to Mexico in 1994 was an improvement in co-operation on anti-narcotics matters.

  The drug syndicates in Mexico are a loose amalgamation of drug lords and their families known as ‘the Mexican federation’ which has, since 1990, gone from being relatively small and unsophisticated to turning Mexico’s drug trade into one to rival Colombia’s. The federation has liaisons with Colombian cartels who often fly consignments into Mexico with the Mexicans transporting them across the American border.

  Mexican smuggling over this long frontier is sometimes conducted in body bags worn by the thousands of illegal immigrants and migrant workers who cross for the bright lights of the USA. Traffickers buy their services with money and work permits or US resident documents.

  Yet the main method of smuggling today is by vehicle. The Mexicans usually use quite crude methods, simply stuffing the drugs into the boot of cars then relying on a combination of speed, ‘scattershot runs’ (the blitzing of border posts, sending eight or ten vehicles through at a time, betting the US customs will search at most one vehicle in the convoy) and sheer bravado for success. So vast is the problem, the DEA maintain a major regional office in El Paso, close to the Mexican border, agents working here calling themselves ‘border rats’. They co-ordinate intelligence and monitor the border crossing where the highway from Mexico, US Interstate 25, begins. This is known by enforcement agents as ‘Heroin Highway’ for it is a major transport route. At Albuquerque, New Mexico, it meets US Interstate 40, the trunk road from Los Angeles to North Carolina, branching at Knoxville, Tennessee, into US 81, which goes to Washington and New York. Inevitably, US 40 is a heroin pipeline. It is also, by coincidence, part of the old Route 66 and lends some pertinent credence to the blues/rock standard, (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66, written by B. Troup and made famous by the Rolling Stones on one of their early albums, the refrain of which invites the listener to ‘get hip’, have a kick and take a trip to California on that particular highway.

  America remains, at least in the minds of much of the public, the main destination for heroin whatever its source. According to DEA analysis under the Heroin Signature Program, the heroin on the streets of the USA in 1994 came from all over the world: 57% was of Golden Triangle origin, 32% South American, 6% Golden Crescent and 5% Mexican. The relatively high percentage for South American heroin, however, partly arises from the large numbers of seizures made at Miami and New York airports due to the high numbers of couriers apprehended bringing in South American heroin. Average purity in 1994 was 40%, much higher than the figure of 7% prevalent in the early 1980s. Very recent studies suggest 60% of heroin in the USA may now be coming from Burma and that, after years of heroin being second to cocaine as ‘the drug of choice’, it is now making all the running.

  Much heroin is imported by Chinese traffickers, the bulk of their Golden Triangle produce entering the country along the eastern seaboard, where New York City is by far the largest importation and distribution hub, or via the west coast. From ports such as Seattle, San Francisco and Vancouver Chinese societies, their couriers often crew members on container ships, with heroin also being smuggled in imported
vehicles, divert the drug through Canada to a distribution hub in Toronto. Golden Crescent heroin is mostly smuggled through north-eastern seaports and distributed down the east coast and in the mid-west. It is primarily brought in by Pakistanis although Afghans, Israelis, Iranians, Albanians, Lebanese and Turks also participate. Mexican heroin is usually only to be found in the west, mid- and southwest.

  South American heroin is rapidly increasing in availability, especially in north-eastern cities and along the east coast where it had the highest purity of any source in 1994. Such high purity is essential as the Colombian traffickers seek to build up a clientele and maintain user loyalty in the fiercely competitive market. To establish themselves, Colombian traffickers are known to be using a variety of tactics such as offering free samples to potential distributors, persuading established cocaine distributors to purchase and sell heroin as a condition of doing business and undercutting competitors’ prices in some cities in an effort to win over business.

  The heroin trade is superbly organised: if such acumen was applied to some legitimate produce, it could increase profits severalfold. The Mafia are no longer dominant in the trade as they were and street peddling is more likely to be conducted by gangs or groups organised on ethnic or racial grounds who cater for their own racial or socio-economic peers.

  The smashing of the Mafia was a major law enforcement coup involving the co-operation of a number of state police forces in collaboration with the FBI and the DEA. In 1970, the US government had passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations legislation, otherwise known as the RICO statute. Originally designed to provide prosecutors with a weapon against organised crime, infiltration of labour unions and businesses, it was realised it could be as effectively used to combat the entire structure of organised crime. To accommodate this, the FBI was remodelled in 1980 to strike at the Mafia. The enforcement agencies targeted, amongst other things, the Mafia heroin distribution system. Thirty-nine mafiosi were indicted for narcotics offences and related racketeering crimes. The bugging of the home of Paul Castellano provided more intelligence. Castellano, the notorious godfather of the Gambino Mafia ‘family’, the most powerful criminal organisation in the USA and the Mafia capo di tutti i capi (the Boss of all the Bosses or, literally, head of all heads), had in fact specifically forbidden narcotics dealings in the early 1980s, stating anyone in his family who handled drugs would be ‘whacked’, a quaint euphemism meaning murdered. He was himself whacked by Mafia opponents in December 1985, certain members of his family having made – and going on to make – enormous profits out of heroin dealing. With successes throughout the 1980s, the 1988 arrest of 200 Mafia traffickers in Sicily and the USA along with Giuseppe (Joe) Gambino, a key player in the Sicilian Connection, and, in 1989, the apprehension of John Gotti, the new Gambino family capo, much of the Mafia’s infrastructure and power was destroyed.