NATION : Asian Gangs’ Heroin Role Hit

WASHINGTON — Asian organized crime groups that have replaced the Mafia as principal suppliers of heroin are threatening the United States with a new drug epidemic, the FBI told a Senate committee today.

The Asian groups, chiefly ethnic Chinese, are smuggling large supplies of heroin that are substantially more pure than past supplies and therefore more attractive to potential users, FBI agents said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the panel, warned that the number and power of the Chinese crime groups “may very well explode in this decade.”

Information gathered by the committee suggests that during the 1990s “Asian organized crime in the United States may grow to double the number of members that the Mafia had at its peak in the early 1960s,” Biden said.