Heroin: Encyclopedia II - Heroin - Production and trafficking

Heroin - Production and trafficking

Heroin - Manufacturing

Heroin is produced for the black market through opium refinement processes. Unlike drugs such as LSD, the production of which requires considerable expertise in chemistry and access to constituents which are now tightly controlled, the refinement of heroin from opium is a relatively simple process requiring only moderate technical know-how and common chemicals.

First morphine is isolated from the crude opium and then reacted with acetic anhydride, a chemical also used in the production of aspirin. The purity of the extracted morphine determines in large part the quality of the resulting heroin. Most black market heroin is highly impure due to contaminants left after refinement of opium into morphine which then remain in the final product.

Heroin - History

The origins of the present international illegal heroin trade can be traced back to the forcible imposition of the opium trade on China by Britain in the late 1700s. The opium trade sparked the two Opium Wars that resulted in a series of Unequal Treaties that ceded Hong Kong to Britain in mid 19th century. Later in the 20th century, Chinese triad gangs would eventually come to play a major role in the heroin trade, most of which are based in Hong Kong and Southern China.

Although it remained legal in some countries until after World War II, the anti-drug activism of the United States led most western countries to declare heroin a controlled substance in the latter half of the 20th century.

Prior to the 1970s, much of the world's opium was grown in Turkey, but in the late Sixties, under pressure from the U.S. and the United Nations, Turkey agreed to eliminate its opium production, leading to the development of a major new cultivation and refining base in the so-called "Golden Triangle" region in South East Asia in the late 1960s.

Heroin use first appeared as a sub-cultural addiction problem in several countries in the early 20th century, but like the opium trade from which it developed, it was mainly restricted to small and fairly well-defined groups, such as Chinese migrants in western cities.

Although it was beginning to become more prevalent by the 1930s, Asian historian and drug traffic expert Dr Alfred W. McCoy reports that heroin trafficking was virtually eliminated in the U.S. during World War II. But, McCoy contends, the Mafia was able to gain control of the heroin trade thanks in large measure to a covert deal between top Mafia leader Lucky Luciano and American military intelligence.

McCoy claims that Luciano was asked to provide Mafia assistance in rooting out communist and/or Nazi influence on the waterfronts, and that the Army wanted Luciano to provide their forces with local Mafia assistance during America's planned invasions of Sicily and Italy; in return the jailed mobster was allowed to run his operations unhindered from his cell, and he was deported back to Sicily after the war, where he oversaw a massive expansion in his organisation's drug operations before his death.

Luciano, who visited Vietnam, forged an alliance between his American Mafia family and the tough Corsican Mafia, establishing a wide-ranging heroin shipping, refining and distribution network based in the port town of Marseilles in France. He allegedly masterminded the network that was portrayed (semi-fictionally) in the film The French Connection.

Thanks to Corsican Mafia connections in the former French colony of Vietnam, the operation was able to forge new alliances with underworld forces there, and with triad gangs and organised crime figures in Hong Kong, Shanghai, New York City and Sydney. As opium production in Turkey waned, the Mafia established a lucrative new source of supply in the Golden Triangle region and funnelled the production out via South Vietnam. McCoy's most controversial assertion is that the C.I.A. pursued a policy, which he describes as "radical pragmatism", and that in the name of the fight against Communism, the Agency was covertly making expedient alliances with local warlords, Mafiosi and corrupt South Vietnamese officials.

The battalions of American servicemen in Vietnam provided a perfect test market for the Asian syndicates, and heroin use among soldiers rapidly reached near-epidemic proportions in 1970-71, with some unit medical officers reporting that as many as 15% percent of G.I.s in some units were regular users.

In 1971 the first large consignments of South East Asian heroin were intercepted in Europe and America, and by the mid-1970s heroin addiction fulfilled its promise as a serious social problem in the United States (where it had already been growing in street traffic throughout the late 1950s and 1960s), Australia, Great Britain and many other nations, notably among youth and particularly in the African-American population in the U.S. Based on the success of this network, organised crime groups began to establish illegal trades in other highly addictive drugs, notably cocaine.

Heroin - Trafficking

Traffic is heavy worldwide, with the biggest producer being Afghanistan, which after years of war and poverty is now an area ripe for opium growing. A 60 Minutes report claims that 87 percent of the world's heroin supply comes from Afghanistan.

Some observers, particularly political conservatives in the United States, have accused China of being a leading producer of heroin, but evidence in support of this is questionable. Conversely, some radical critics have pointed the finger at the United States, citing the work of Dr Alfred W. McCoy, who alleges that the C.I.A. secretly collaborated with drug syndicates and was complicit in the expansion of the global heroin trade in the late 20th century, even though he has no evidence to back up his accusations. The "French Connection" and Lucky Luciano's role are cited as examples. Reporter Gary Webb, who was found dead in 2004, maintained that the crack epidemic was related to U.S. governmental agencies.

In the 1980's, the Iran-Contra Affair led to a 1988 report from the Subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and international operations, led by Sen. John Kerry, which proved contra-drugs links, including what he deemed "one of the most serious foreign policy failures for the United States", Manuel Noriega's U.S. support. "Narcotic law enforcement has often taken a back seat to other diplomatic and national security archives. The war on drugs must not in the future be sacrificed to other foreign policy considerations," stated the report [3].

Heroin is one of the most profitable illicit drugs since it is compact and easily concealed. At present, opium poppies are mostly grown in the Middle East, India, and Afghanistan, and in Asia, especially in the region known as the Golden Triangle straddling Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Yunnan province in China. There is also cultivation of opium poppies in the Sinaloa region of Mexico and in Colombia. The majority of the heroin consumed in the United States comes from Mexico and Colombia. Up until 2004, Pakistan was considered as one of the biggest opium-growing countries. However, the efforts of Pakistan's Anti-Narcotics Force have since reduced the opium growing area by 59% as of 2001.

Conviction for trafficking in heroin in many countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, carries the death penalty. The penalty applies even to citizens of countries where the penalty is not in place, sometimes causing controversy when foreign visitors are arrested for trafficking, for example the arrest of nine Australians in Bali or the hanging of Australian citizen Van Tuong Nguyen in Singapore, both in 2005.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Production and trafficking", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki