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The flow begins with the white-to-purple-flowered opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, an annual plant grown as a cash crop in Turkey, Mexico and the "golden triangle" of Southeast Asia: the northern portions of Burma, Thailand and Laos. The U.S. is putting heavy pressure on Turkey to end legal poppy growing, so far without much success. Raw opium is converted into so-called morphine base; much of the U.S. supply is refined into heroin at simple clandestine laboratories in southern France. It has come into the U.S. concealed in the toilets of international jets, in cans carrying Spanish fish labels, in hollowed-out ski poles, in automobiles, in false-bottomed wine bottles and crates, in shipments of electronic equipment—the smugglers' ingenuity is inexhaustible, and the supply of lawmen to deal with it is not large. The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs has 850 agents. They have not always been above temptation: 14 were indicted in 1969 for drug trafficking. U.S. Customs men are spread thin; in New York there are only 15 on the drug beat at the airports and on the entire waterfront. Says one: "This is like being a blind goalie in a hockey game."
Much of the heroin traffic, notably in New York City and Miami, is financed and handled by the Mafia, but over the past five years more and more independents and amateurs have crowded into the act: Cubans, Puerto Ricans, blacks, even a few hippies. Top Mafia bosses supposedly banned all dope peddling in 1957 to clean up their image and avoid prosecutions, but, as Informer Joe Valachi said in 1963, "there is always somebody sneaking."
What Can Education Do?
That is not surprising, considering the temptation of astronomical profits. One kilogram—2.2 Ibs.—of morphine base is worth $350 in Turkey; after it is refined to heroin in France, the price jumps to $3,500; unloaded in New York City, it is worth $18,000 before dilution. By the time the heroin gets to the street pusher, it is in one-ounce lots of 25% heroin—the rest is usually milk sugar or quinine—that cost the pusher $500 each. The pusher further cuts the diluted drug into glassine packets of 5% heroin, which he sells for $5 each—the so-called "nickel bag"—to the user. The original kilo has now grossed $225,000 for suppliers, traffickers, pushers and peddlers. The first user often splits the nickel bag into even smaller quantities that he resells for $2 or $3, making a profit that he himself can use to help support his habit. Because the addict often does not know just how strong the stuff he has bought really is, he can easily give himself an overdose that makes him unconscious or even kills him.
Federal officials concede that law enforcement alone is not enough. "To talk only in terms of eliminating the illicit drug supply is, in my judgment, a shortsighted approach," says John Ingersoll, the BNDD director. "What we need is a concomitant long-range program that will eliminate the demand." To that end, the bureau sends out speakers and brochures to teachers, school administrators and community leaders. In the New York City school system, drug education now starts in the fourth grade.