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PRINCIPALDRUG-PRODUCING COUNTRIES

Coca/Cocaine.

As of the early 1990s, all the cocaine, about 30 percent of the heroin, and a significant amount of marijuana entering the United States is produced in the Western Hemisphere—in Mexico, Central, and South America. They are smuggled in through the southern borders of the United States. All of the cocaine consumed in the world is grown and processed in the Andean countries of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia. Some 60 percent of COCA PLANTS (Eryroxylon coca) are cultivated in Peru, about 15 percent in Colombia, and about 25 percent in Bolivia. Peru. Traditional legal cultivation of coca is licensed for cultivation in Cuzco, Peru, but the majority of Peru's illicit crop comes from the Upper Huallaga Valley (UHV), which includes portions of Huanuco, San Martin, and Ucayali departments. Other illicit cultivation occurs in La Convencion and Lares valleys in Cuzco and in the Ayachucho department. Much of the coca leaf is processed into COCA PASTE and cocaine base in crude maceration (steeping) pits positioned near cultivation sites. Clandestine labs then process the paste into base. Normally the base is then shipped to hydrochloride (HCl) laboratories in Colombia, although cocaine HCl production in Peru is rising. Reportedly, traffickers have been moving their laboratories from isolated jungle sites nearer to towns, where corrupt officials can offer protection. The chemicals (kerosene, lime, ether, acetone, hydrochloride acid) needed to process coca leaves into paste, base, and hydrochloride are diverted from legitimate chemical shipments that reach Peru by sea.

Although the Colombian traffickers control most of the cultivation and the processing of coca into paste and base in Peru, some 20 Peruvian trafficking organizations have also been identified. By early 1991, self-limiting by coca growers increased the price for coca derivatives in the UHV; this was largely because of Sendero Luminoso (SL—Shining Path), Maoist political insurgents, who demanded a greater share of the cocaine-base profits. The SL extended their area of influence; charged a tax on coca leaf, paste, and base; and attempted to set prices among the Colombian traffickers, growers, and lab operators—therefore, the prices for coca products varied widely in 1990, showing an average 100 percent increase.

The majority of cocaine base is moved from UHV staging areas by air and by river to Colombia for conversion to cocaine HCl. Drug-control efforts in Peru have been ineffective; violence, political factions, rivalry between the Peruvian police and military, and widespread corruption in a severely depressed economy have contributed to Peru's lack of effectiveness.

Bolivia. By the early 1990s, almost 75 percent of illicit coca was grown in the Chapare, Carrasco, and Arani provinces, in Cochabamba department, Bolivia. Legal cultivation of some 35,000 acres (14,000 ha) occurs only in the Yungas. Small farmers and unemployed migrants cultivate the coca in the Chapare on plots that average one to two acres (less than 1 hectare). When the market price drops below their cost of production, farmers choose not to sell the leaf. Most leaf that is sold to middlemen (intermediarios) is processed in the Chapare and then refined into base or cocaine HCl in the Beni, Cochabamba, or Santa Cruz departments. Due to increased enforcement in the early 1990s, some traffickers moved their base of operations to less accessible locations, and more paste is refined into cocaine base or HCl by about 35 Bolivian trafficking organizations.

Colombian and Bolivian traffickers have integrated some operations vertically, from wholesale paste purchase through cocaine base and HCl re-fining and export. The U.S. government estimates that as much as 35 percent of Bolivian coca paste may be processed in Bolivia prior to export. Chemicals arrive by truck, train, and aircraft from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay. The base is smuggled to Colombia in private aircraft from the Beni. Increasing its law-enforcement efforts, the Bolivian government eradicated about 10 percent of the cultivation, dismantled a number of laboratories, and disrupted several major trafficking organizations (e.g., Meco Dominquez, Mario Ariaz-Morales, Martin Morales-Daczer).

Colombia. Proximity to a large cash-based U.S. marketplace, powerful criminal organizations, indigenous entrepreneurial spirit, vast tracts of uncontrollable land, and a long tradition of smuggling have made Colombia an ideal source for cocaine. The U.S. government estimated that in 1991 92,000 acres (about 37,500 ha) of the world's 526,500 acres (213,000 ha) of coca were cultivated in Colombia—mainly in the Llanos (plains) region, which encompasses almost 50 percent of eastern Colombia. There is also coca cultivation in Caqueta, Guaviare, Putumayo, and Vaupes departments, with crop expansion into Bolivar department and into south and southwest Colombia. Colombia's drug cartels are the world's leading producers of both cocaine HCL (which is sniffed or snorted) and CRACK (which is smoked).

Colombian cocaine-trafficking organizations are sophisticated and well-organized industries, which derive their strength from control of cocaine laboratories and the smuggling routes to North America. After financing the cultivation of coca plants in Bolivia and Peru, Colombian traffickers often oversee the processing of the leaves into coca paste and sometimes base, which may then be shipped to laboratories in Colombia where the traffickers re-fine the coca paste—first into coca base and then into cocaine HCl by the ton. Recently, Peru and Bolivia have stopped shipping some of their coca products to Colombia and have begun to refine them into cocaine HCl in laboratories near their own fields, but as of the early 1990s Colombia operates the greatest number of base and HCl labs.

Cocaine is a major threat to weakening Colombia's democratic institutions and directly or indirectly affecting everyone in the country. Colombians increasingly recognize that the violence and corruption that accompany drug trafficking are harming their economy and society. By the early 1990s, under President Cesar Gaviria, the Colombian government security forces began enforcement procedures against cocaine traffickers. The Colombian police have also eradicated virtually all marijuana cultivation in the traditional growing areas along the North Coast and Guajira peninsula. The government of Colombia consequently damaged the leadership structure of the Medellin cartel by jailing its leader, Pablo Escobar. Some feared that jailing Escobar would not curtail his cocaine trafficking, but it did have a symbolic effect on the Medellin cocaine business. (Escobar was later killed after escaping from jail.)

A signatory of the 1961, 1971, and 1988 United Nations International Narcotics Control Conventions, Colombia demonstrates its political will and commitment to investigate and immobilize major cocaine traffickers and to eradicate marijuana and opium. Colombia has also created public-order courts and begun to share evidence, reform its judiciary, and track the substantial money flows into the country—requiring the banking institutions to keep records on cash transactions over $10,000.

In the realm of CROP CONTROL, despite widespread testing of various coca herbicides, the government has not begun a major coca-eradication effort; this is largely because it is not a focus of antidrug efforts—given the location of the fields in terrorist controlled land, it is dangerous for ground forces and almost impossible for air attack. Fearing a new and burgeoning heroin business, in 1992 the Colombian government agreed to spray the common garden herbicide glyphosate (Roundup) to kill the source—the opium poppy fields—after a widespread manual eradication effort in 1991. Since the mid-1980s, marijuana production continues to be minimal because of an effective herbicidal campaign.

The Colombian national police, the military, and the security forces have conducted major operations against the Medellin and Cali cocaine cartels with the assistance of U.S. technical and information support. Colombia's government has, however, paid a heavy price for its action, suffering almost 500 deaths by assassination or during enforcement operations. Colombia has also threatened to use, or has used, the tool of extradition to incarcerate or immobilize major traffickers. In late 1990, President Cesar Gaviria's offer of amnesty (a plea-bargaining opportunity for major traffickers) resulted in decreased violence throughout the country and the surrender and imprisonment of five traffickers and one terrorist, including Pablo Escobar and the three Ochoa brothers (Jorge Luis, Juan David, and Fabio).

Opium/Heroin.

The opium poppy (PAPAVER SOMNIFERUM) is the source of heroin. It is grown in three principal geographic regions: Southeast ASIA, Southwest Asia, and Latin America. The Southeast Asian GOLDEN TRIANGLE countries of Myanmar (Burma until 1989), Laos, and Thailand in 1991 cultivated approximately 81 percent of the world's total, 488,000 acres (195,000 ha), yielding 2,500 metric tons of opium, which would yield 250 metric tons of heroin. The Golden Crescent countries of Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan cultivated approximately 11 percent, and the Latin American countries of Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia (plus the Middle Eastern country of Lebanon) produced approximately 8 percent. India is the world's largest cultivator of licit opium, producing about 35,000 acres (14,000 ha) annually for the international medicinal market.

Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle: Myanmar. The largest supply of illicit opium—56 percent of U.S. availability—comes from the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia. Fields of opium poppy are planted on hillsides that have been prepared by ancient slash-and-burn agricultural methods. Nearly 90 percent of Southeast Asian opium comes from the Union of Myanmar (Burma), where cultivation areas are largely controlled by antigovernment insurgents in the Shan state. Heavy cultivation exists east of the Salween river and in the eastern and southern parts of the Shan state, at an average elevation of 3,300 feet (1,000 m). Fields are small, averaging about an acre (0.5 ha). The climate is ideal for growing poppy. The growers depend on opium for survival, receiving subsistence prices for and selling entire stocks to the political insurgents, who use the proceeds for food, arms, and ammunition. The opium is also consumed locally by large numbers of addicts.

Most processing of opium and heroin in Southeast Asia occurs in Myanmar, with only small amounts in Thailand and Laos. The Shan United Army and the Wa insurgent groups control refineries along the Thai/Myanmar border; the Kokang, Wa and Kachin ethnic groups also operate large heroin refineries along the China/Myanmar border. Increasing amounts of heroin are smuggled via southern China to Hong Kong, south through Malaysia and Singapore, and west through India and Bangladesh.

With the overthrow of the long-standing government of Burma by a military junta in 1988—and ongoing political strife in the new Union of Myanmar—suspension of aerial opium eradication and diminished enforcement contributed to increases in opium cultivation, heroin refining, and drug trafficking. A signatory to the 1961 SINGLE CONVENTION ON NARCOTIC DRUGS, but not to the 1972 Protocol to the Convention or the 1971 PSYCHOTROPIC SUBSTANCES CONVENTION, MYANMAR had acceded to the 1988 UN Convention but now disputes the validity of extradition and submission of disputes to the International Court of Justice.

Thailand. Only a small amount of land is used to grow opium in Thailand, but it remains a net importer of opium, consuming far more than it produces. Developed transportation systems make Thailand the primary transit route to the opium/heroin world markets, shipping by air, sea, and overland. Since the mid 1800s, opium has been grown in the northern highlands by nomadic hill tribes, who are not tied to Thailand culturally, religiously or politically. Opium cultivation in Thailand is illegal, so the government has sponsored both eradication and crop-substitution efforts in the north.

Thailand is a party to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and the 1972 Protocol to the Single Convention. In 1991, Thailand passed conspiracy and asset-forfeiture laws and a new extradition treaty with the United States; both are working on a mutual legal-assistance treaty.

Laos. Recent changes in the world's political order have resulted in cooperation by the Laotian government to reduce opium cultivation. Widespread reports of Lao military corruption and involvement with the traffickers, however, have limited the success. A landlocked country, Laos has been isolated and ignored by the West since 1975 when the Communist Pathet Lao seized power; opium poppies have been grown in its nine northern provinces, yielding in the early 1990s about 20 percent of Burmese production. Three crop-substitution projects have had limited success—one in Houaphanh province, one in Vientiane province, and one in Xiang Khouang province.

The Lao government does not have a mutual legal-assistance treaty or an extradition treaty with the United States, but it does have a formal memorandum of understanding and informal agreements with U.S. agencies to cooperate more fully in drug-control efforts.

China and the Golden Triangle. In its 1992 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, the U.S. government stated that opium cultivation may be emerging as a major problem in the People's Republic of China. China has become a major narcotics transit point with its open border to Myanmar, its location adjacent to the Golden Triangle, and its excellent transportation and communication links with the trade ports of Hong Kong and Macao. Much of the heroin processed by the Kokang Chinese in the Golden Triangle travels by road through China's Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guangdong provinces to Hong Kong for overseas distribution. In 1991, Chinese law enforcement seized more drugs and investigated more cases than at any time since the Communist takeover. A spreading domestic opium consumption appears to be accompanying the increased heroin flow.

The Golden Crescent: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. The Golden Crescent supplied about 21 percent of the heroin consumed in the United States in the early 1990s. In area under cultivation, the Golden Crescent countries produce almost 11 percent of the world's opium.

Pakistan. This is a producer and an important transit country for opiates and HASHISH. The Islamic government of Pakistan maintains a poppy ban in areas under its control and manages to maintain about the same production level from year to year, but cultivation has increased slightly in areas where government control is ineffective or only nominal. Cultivation is both rain fed and irrigated in the northwest and the tribal areas of Kyber, Mohmand, and Bajaur. Once the poppy is harvested, it is processed into opium and heroin in more than a 100 clandestine mobile laboratories in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) bordering Afghanistan, which is controlled by armed tribes who maintain traditional cross-border connections.

Pakistan is party to the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the 1988 UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. Yet, with widespread corruption and government inaction, Pakistan failed to enforce its counternarcotics laws in the tribal areas, raising questions about its compliance with the 1961 Convention. Pakistan's government does however cooperate with U.S. law-enforcement agencies and has responded positively to extradition requests.

Afghanistan. After Myanmar, Afghanistan is the world's second largest producer of illicit opium. Considered an effective cash crop, opium has been grown for generations in Afghanistan, in the Helmand valley and Nangahar province, and used for medicinal and culinary purposes. The opium is processed into heroin and smuggled across the borders of Iran through Turkey. Afghanistan's government exerts little control over production or trafficking. Drug revenues continue to finance political resistance operations against the Communist government and provide a livelihood for farmers who depend on the opium crops. Unless the government is willing and able to control opium production in the countryside, both production and domestic consumption will continue to rise. The end of Soviet occupation (1979-1989) has not brought the refugees home, but their return will affect Afghanistan's overall economy and may cause an increase in drug trafficking.

Afghanistan is a party to the 1961 Single Convention but not to the 1972 Protocol amending the Convention. It is a signatory to the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances but not to the 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

Iran. Limited data exist on drug cultivation and trafficking since the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979 under the Ayatallah Khomeini. Iran outlawed opium cultivation in 1980 but growth reportedly occurs in remote areas near the Pakistan and Afghanistan borders. Allegedly, laboratories process heroin from opium in the Kurdish areas of the northwest and the Baluch region in the southeast, with significant Irani and local addict populations consuming the product. The U.S. government estimated that Iran produces about 50 percent of the amount of heroin produced in Afghanistan.

Drug trafficking is increasing along the Afghan-Iran and Afghan-Pakistan borders. Baluch and Pashtun tribesmen from all three Golden Crescent countries smuggle drugs in addition to traditional contraband. Pakistanis and Iranis could increase poppy cultivation to help rebuild their livelihoods that were interrupted by almost twelve years of war.

Mexico. In the 1970s, Mexico began to smuggle significant amounts of heroin into the United States, replacing Turkey as the principal heroin supplier for U.S. addicts. Opium is grown and harvested twice a year—winter and spring—in Mexico's states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Durango. In the 1990s, harvesting has become year round, and cultivation has expanded to include Mexico's west coast from Sinaloa to the Mexican-Guatemalan border. Supplying an estimated 23 percent of the heroin consumed in the United States, Mexican traffickers produce both traditional brown and black-tar heroin, although the predominant type smuggled into the United States is the black-tar type. Conversion from the popular "Mexican brown" in the 1970s to the black-tar variety is a result of traffickers using more cost-effective mobile laboratories. The mobile labs are much harder to detect and can move with the harvesters, as they go from field to field collecting the opium gum and producing the purer black tar preferred by U.S. addicts. Although the mobile labs are found near the fields, Mexican law-enforcement personnel are also finding them near towns and cities, where chemicals and security can be acquired more easily. The administration of President Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) instituted effective law enforcement, including strong measures to combat official corruption, a 40 percent increase in opium eradication, and increased cocaine interdiction.

Mexico is a signatory to the 1988 UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances and entered into a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) with the United States in 1991.

Guatemala and Colombia. These two countries have both begun to cultivate substantial amounts of opium in the late 1980s. By 1991, in Guatemala's western provinces of San Marcos and Huehuetenango, farmers harvested approximately 4,300 acres (1,700 ha) of opium poppy, which had been cultivated in steep mountain valleys on small plots. Mexican traffickers provide the financial, technical, and agricultural support for local growers to harvest three crops per year; the opium, however, is sent to Mexico for processing into heroin. The Guatemalan government has conducted aerial herbicidal eradication with some success, destroying almost a third of the total cultivated, but farmers are relocating their fields to more remote areas. In Colombia, in 1991, over 6,000 acres (2,500 ha) of opium poppy were located in 12 of the 32 states—planted for the most part in the Cauca and Huila departments and financed and controlled by the Cali cartel. Colombia has agreed to begin herbicidal spraying from crop-duster aircraft, as it did during its mid-1980s marijuana-eradication program.

Cannabis.

A by-product of the HEMP plant CANNABIS SATIVA is marijuana, which is the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States. Both the plant and its PSYCHOACTIVE ingredient TETRAHYDRO-CANNABINOL (THC) are classified as CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES by the U.S. government, which estimates that Mexico supplies the majority of U.S.-consumed marijuana—perhaps as much as 63 percent. The U.S. supply accounts for another 18 percent, Colombia for 5 percent, Jamaica for 3 percent, and the remaining 11 percent comes from Belize, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Brazil and Paraguay also cultivate cannabis but the majority is consumed locally or exported to neighboring South American countries.

Mexico. Although Cannabis grows throughout the country, major concentrations have been located historically in the western states of Chihuahua, Jalisco, San Luis Potosi, Sinaloa, Sonora, and Zacatecas; it is also found in Mexico's eastern state of Veracruz and, recently, in the southern states of Chiapas, Guerrero, Michoacan, and Oaxaca. Farmers grew two crops per year, traditionally, but in many areas it is grown and harvested year round. Cannabis is cultivated by subsistence farmers who often intermingle the crop with corn and beans. Traffickers have introduced irrigation and technological advances to help the farmer (campesino) avoid eradication attempts and survive cyclical droughts. The traffickers control the processing and transport of the product into the United States, smuggling the vast majority by road.

Colombia. Once the primary source for marijuana consumed in the United States, in the 1990s Colombia cultivates about 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) in the traditional growing areas of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and Serrania de Perija of northeastern Colombia. Since the dramatic success of the Colombian government's 1980s aerial-eradication program, only small amounts of low-quality cannabis have been cultivated in Colombia.

Southeast Asia. This region produces a high-grade marijuana that became popular in the late 1980s; it is cultivated in Thailand and Laos, then shipped to staging points along Thailand's southern coast, to western Cambodia, and to the coast of Vietnam. Moved by ten-wheel trucks, the product is then loaded onto trawlers and taken to motherships in the Gulf of Thailand. Oceangoing vessels, yachts, and sailing boats have all been used to smuggle the product to the United States, with trans-Pacific shipments occurring in the spring and summer. U.S. traffickers usually control the commerce of marijuana into the United States, off-loading their cargo to smaller faster vessels off the U.S. coast.

Two crops a year are generally harvested in Southeast Asia, in December-January and April-May. Cultivators normally press the harvested marijuana into kilogram blocks, using a hydraulic press, and then package the blocks into aluminum foil or plastic bags that are vacuum-packed. They are hermetically sealed with heat and wrapped with nylon-reinforced plastic tape, then stored in tin canisters, burlap sacks, nylon or canvas gym bags, or boxes—all designed to maintain the product's composition, eliminate odor, and prevent mildew.

The THC content of Southeast Asian marijuana can be as high as 9 percent, whereas the average THC content for Mexican or U.S. marijuana is only 2 to 3 percent.

Jamaica. The successful eradication campaigns mounted since 1987 have decreased significantly Jamaica's importance as a supplier of Cannabis in the form of ganja. Cultivation has shifted from the accessible wetlands of west-central Jamaica to remote sites in the highlands, often in plots smaller than an acre. In the early 1990s, of 4,500 acres (1,800 ha) cultivated, almost 50 percent were reportedly eradicated. The rest was smuggled into the United States in concealed storage areas of pleasure craft, as well as in commercial fishing vessels, cargo ships, and container ships.

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SIGNIFICANCE

Although drug cultivators, transportation workers, processors, laboratory workers, middlemen, and smugglers receive their wages, the majority of the money made in the drug business remains in the consuming country or is invested in off-shore banking havens. Drug-producing countries do not normally offer attractive long-term investment opportunities. Countries such as Peru, Bolivia, Myanmar, and Afghanistan have troubled economies, which do not attract traffickers' investment portfolios; rather, traffickers spend money on luxury items, such as foreign real estate and automobiles, race horses, gambling houses, yachts, clothes, and jewels.

In the Golden Triangle and the Golden Crescent, drug production and trafficking offer a primary cash crop for food and the support of political (antigovernment) operations. Resistance groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan and insurgent tribes in the Golden Triangle use the profits from the sale of opium to buy rice and the arms to fight the central governments. Politically speaking, illicit-drug production and trafficking offer a viable means of acquiring wealth, which can be instrumental in buying power and influence. In some countries, the traffickers and insurgent groups may be identical (such as the Wa or the Shan United Army of Burma); in others, insurgency and trafficker goals may be diametrically opposed (such as the Cali cartel and the FARC in Colombia). Most trafficker organizations work to coopt the government and maintain the status quo, buy power and protection, and keep a low profile; insurgent groups, however, seek to be highly visible and wish to change the existing power structure. Despite the opposing objectives of both, traffickers and insurgents often function symbiotically; that is, both need hard currency, security, protection, and armed support to evade detection and apprehension.

HISTORICALSUPPLY SHIFTS

The 1960s and 1970s.

Drug production and trafficking have undergone major shifts since the 1960s. After the so-called French Connection was broken between 1968 and 1972, Mexico began to supply the United States with a low-quality heroin to fill the market demand. As Mexican eradication became more successful in the mid to late 1970s and the Iranian Islamic revolution erupted in 1979, significant amounts of Southwest Asian heroin from Afghanistan and Pakistan were smuggled, often by Iranians, through Western Europe into the United States. Throughout the 1970s, heroin from Mexico, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East was high on the U.S. drug-control policy agenda. No one denied that cocaine and marijuana abuse might be dangerous; indeed, initial attempts were made to initiate bilateral programs with the Andean cocaine source countries in their traditional growing areas, but because policymakers believed that the negative health consequences of heroin consumption were far worse, the U.S. law-enforcement emphasis was placed on cocaine and marijuana.

The 1980s.

In the 1980s, targeting heroin gave way to focusing on the reduction of cocaine and marijuana use in the United States, since greater numbers of Americans were using and abusing them, creating large drugged populations. Nongovernmental institutions became very active in spreading the Just Say No message of the Reagan Administration (1981-1989). Moreover, until the early 1980s, when research had documented the negative health consequences of cocaine, the drug enjoyed a glamour and allure that heroin had never possessed. In some circles, the ability to afford cocaine was a sign that one had succeeded. Most believed that cocaine was not addictive and it became the recreational drug preferred by Hollywood, sports figures, and musicians. The 1980s was the Coke Decade—with cocaine used both by the affluent consumption-oriented yuppie "me generation," as well as the poor disenfranchised underclass who tried to emulate their heros and "make it" in their own world. Both the powder and the rock-crystal crack forms found eager markets and ready money in the so-called affluent Reagan years. The stock market crashes of 1987 and 1989 ended the boom in the national and the drug economies.

When Colombia replaced Mexico in the early 1980s as the primary source of U.S. cocaine and marijuana, smuggling vast quantities through the South Florida peninsula, the Reagan Administration turned its focus to cocaine and marijuana control in the Western Hemisphere. In the late 1980s, the Bush Administration (1989-1993) continued the same cocaine policy but decreased federal attention on marijuana supply reduction. Bolivia and Peru quickly expanded their production of illicit coca in nontraditional growing areas of the Chapare and the Upper Huallaga Valley, two areas that remain the major source for the world's illicit coca. Surrounding and potential transit countries also became more involved in the cocaine smuggling enterprise. The Caribbean nations functioned as attractive transit points for both cocaine and marijuana from South America. As the United States placed more enforcement pressure on the Caribbean, the traffickers shifted their routes through Central America and Mexico. In the midto-late 1980s, Mexico became a principal transit and smuggling route for an estimated 50 percent of the cocaine entering the United States. In response to smuggler shifts, both Mexico and the United States have increased interdiction efforts along the joint southwest border and the U.S. 1992 Drug Control Strategy focuses its attention in Mexico predominately on improving cocaine interdiction.

The 1990s.

U.S. policymakers are faced with a number of new challenges—namely, increased heroin production and trafficking in Central Asia (China), in Central and South America (Guatemala and Colombia), and in Myanmar and Afghanistan. Another challenge is the growing cocaine business in Bolivia and Peru, where increased processing of coca into cocaine products occurs. Finally, policymakers need to consider the potentially devastating impact of increased cocaine and heroin demand and consumption in the new democracies of Eastern Europe and the new republics of the former Soviet Union.

Beginning in 1991, the U.S. government expressed its concern over an increase in worldwide heroin production, trafficking, and abuse. Record seizures have been made in China's Yunnan province—signaling major changes in trafficking routes out of the Golden Triangle through China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to the West. Heroin traffickers have begun to use the immense container-shipping industry to smuggle large amounts of heroin from Asia into the United States. In June 1991, the single largest heroin seizure in the world was made in San Francisco, hidden in containerized freight from Taiwan. Colombia also became a significant cultivator of opium for the first time, in the 1990s—planting an estimated 6,000 acres (2,500 ha) of opium in 1991. Although opium cultivation has decreased in Mexico and the Golden Crescent, increasing demand in the United States may be met by Colombia and Myanmar.

The cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, as measured by prevalence and incidence indicators, appears to have peaked and is declining for certain cohort populations, but concern continues over the chronic intensive use of the crack form among the predominantly minority underclass; those least able to cope—the uneducated, unemployed, and disenfranchised—are the victims. With processing facilities now closer to source countries least able to implement effective drug-control programs politically and economically, these two problems present daunting challenges for U.S. public policymakers.

Finally, the massive political, economic, and social changes that occurred since 1989—the democratization and political upheaval in the Eastern bloc and the Soviet Union—may result in increased drug demand, driving up drug production, trafficking, and serious negative health consequences. Unfortunately, accompanying the economic difficulties and growing political pains in the fledgling democracies are increases in crime, violence, and drug abuse.

(SEE ALSO: Amphetamine Epidemics; Drug Interdiction; Money Laundering; Operation Intercept; Terrorism and Drugs; Transit Countries for Illicit Drugs; )

JAMES VAN WERT