Violence Feared as Asian Heroin Influx Soars

A flood of highly potent Asian heroin suddenly pouring into the West Coast in record amounts has law enforcement officials worried about a possible surge of violence among newly emerging Thai, Cambodian and Laotian drug rings bent on expanding their markets.

One top federal official warned that the situation has the potential for violence in California similar to the “cocaine cowboy” wars that plagued Florida in the 1970s when rival drug dealers engaged in shoot-outs in the streets.

The top U.S. Customs drug enforcement official on the West Coast, John E. Hensley, said the recent murder of two Drug Enforcement Administration agents during an investigation into an Asian heroin ring could be “the tip of the iceberg” of violence by Asian gangs in Los Angeles and other major California cities.

“We’ve had a lot of violence in the Asian gangs in the past, but now they are dealing with such vast amounts of heroin that they are coming out of the Asian community and attempting to link up with the Mexican, black and organized white groups that control the street distribution systems,” Hensley said.

“We’ve had strategy meetings over the last three months to see how we might get a handle on this,” he added. “If the Asians start mixing it up with the Mexican and black gangs, we may see the gun battles and murders that marked the old Colombian cocaine cowboy wars in Miami a decade ago. With the kind of money involved, either side could do the shooting.”

Officials of the Los Angeles Police Department and the DEA agreed with Hensley’s assessment that there has been a marked increase in so-called “China White” Asian heroin in the Los Angeles region in the last two years.

Traffic Soaring

“We are definitely getting more China White than in the past,” said Deputy Chief Glenn Levant of the LAPD. “It’s running neck and neck with Mexican heroin. The very week that the two DEA agents were murdered DEA seized over 200 pounds of China White in two separate seizures.”

The chief DEA spokesman in Los Angeles, Roger Guevara, said federal estimates until recently were that 15% of the heroin smuggled into California was of the Asian variety.

“There is a major increase,” Guevara said. “We now estimate that Southeast Asian heroin represents 50% to 80% of all the heroin coming into the country. It’s a huge influx for Los Angeles, and it has turned Los Angeles into a major transshipment center for New York.

“The Asians, including the Taiwanese, have a ready supply and the potential growth of Asian gangs in heroin distribution can lead to more violence,” Guevara said. “On the other hand, the blacks, Mexicans and the whites have always controlled the street heroin market.

“The potential is also there for an alliance,” Guevara said. “In addition to the new Asian groups who are just getting started, we have the old Chinese triads such as the Wah Ching, who have had their hand in heroin for years.”

Hensley and other federal drug officials agreed with the LAPD estimate that Asian heroin being shipped primarily into Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego now rivals the amount of Mexican brown heroin being smuggled across the border.

Roughly half the Asian heroin is consumed in California and the rest is shipped throughout the country as far east as New York, which has the nation’s largest population of heroin addicts, Hensley said.

He estimated that California is now the entry point for half the heroin coming into the United States.

“A few years ago we were finding grams of heroin and opium being sent by mail to Cambodians, Thais, Laotians and Vietnamese,” Hensley said. “In late 1985, that started to become ounces. Now we’re getting kilogram quantities coming in through the mails in addition to the amounts we take off ships and couriers.

“In just one case this year we had 64 pounds of China White heroin sent in three different packages to one house in Oakland,” Hensley added.

Expected to Continue

“In the first four months of this fiscal year alone we have seized 77 pounds in the mails. That’s more than we seized in the mails in the last three years and we expect it to continue to increase dramatically.”

Until the last two years, Hensley said, most of the Asian heroin and opium being shipped to West Coast cities was consumed by Asian users in California. The economics of the heroin trade, h1870095734the nation.

“Asian heroin will often come into this country at 95% purity, compared to maybe 80% purity for Mexican heroin, which is generally viewed as an inferior product,” Hensley said.

“One kilo (2.2 pounds) of Asian heroin (which sells in Thailand for $7,000 to $11,000) will sell here for between $90,000 and $200,000. That compares to $12,000 or so for a kilo of cocaine. And the heroin can be cut much more than cocaine. The heroin addict usually gets a product that’s 3% to 10% in purity. On the street, a kilo ends up being worth a couple of million dollars.”

Increase in Seizures

Hensley said West Coast Customs agents seized 165 pounds of Asian heroin in 1987, roughly 65% of the national total seized. Since Oct. 1, the start of the 1988 fiscal year, Customs agents have already seized 111 pounds of China White heroin, half of all the Asian heroin seized in the United States.

“The scary part about all this is that we don’t have as much of a handle on the Asian groups as we do on the Mexican and black heroin rings,” Hensley said. “We simply don’t have the Cambodian and Laotian agents to put in there. Plus this stuff, particularly the Cambodian heroin, is coming from Communist Bloc countries that don’t give us any help at the point of origin.”