Bagging Heroin/B

On the streets of cities throughout the U.S., a heroin panic is about to hit. The bad news for strung-out junkies is the result of an extraordinary strike by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. Last week, after ten days of intricately coordinated arrests in 35 cities, federal narcs had bagged 309 men and women described by DEA Chief Peter Bensinger as "distributors and kingpins in the heroin market involving Mexican Brown." It was the biggest --and perhaps most important--federal drug bust ever. In addition, warrants were out for another 150 people.

Dangerous Work. Mexican Brown --or Heroin/B as the feds call it--accounts for more than two-thirds of the horse shot into the arms of an estimated 400,000 U.S. addicts. The arrests, reports TIME Correspondent Don Sider, "grew out of several years of usually dull, sometimes dangerous work that began to come together last May." Using information from undercover agents and pushers-turned-informers, the DEA began tracing in detail the distribution web. Early this month officials concluded that they knew enough about 57 distribution rings to try smashing them.

With the precision that characterized the campaign throughout, Administrator Bensinger first filled in U.S. Attorneys who would prosecute the incoming arrestees, discussed the expected influx of prisoners with Norman Carlson, director of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, and consulted Dr. Robert Du-Pont, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, about treatment requirements for addicts who would suddenly be in trouble as the supply of horse fell (the average addict needs five grams of heroin a day, at a cost of $60). Local hospitals were even alerted in case the planned arrests led to any injuries.

Not a shot actually had to be fired. On the first and biggest day of the bust, agents scooped up suspects at their homes, offices or hangouts in 19 states. The only incident occurred in Kansas City, where one accused dealer slammed into an officer's car in a futile escape attempt. Some of the arrestees lived well indeed. In one $330,000 Beverly Hills home (which was complete with $25,000 Jaguar, $40,000 Rolls-Royce and swimming pool), agents found $125,000 in cash--testimony to the enormous profits of the drug trade.

Baby-powder Cans. Details vary from ring to ring, but the DEA cites the methods of the Oakland-based organization of Lemmie Daniel Coleman and the Los Angeles operation of Henry Duwayne Watson as typical. According to DEA agents, each man had a connection in a different Mexican border town who picked up the heroin that had been processed from poppies grown in western Mexico. Couriers en route to Coleman passed through various customs points with shaped plastic bags taped to their bodies. Coleman then shipped the powder to his lieutenants, from them to distributors and then to street dealers in a dozen U.S. cities, from San Francisco to Rochester. Virtually everyone who handled the heroin cut its purity, which dropped from 40% to 6%, the normal street-sale percentage. Heroin purchased in Mexico for $20,000 per kilo eventually sold for 25 times that amount. Using a similar system, Watson allegedly serviced cities from Seattle to New York, moving his horse around in condoms hidden in baby-powder cans under a layer of talc. * Watson, a hard bargainer, required his couriers--mostly prostitutes--to fly out and get the money before he sent them back with the goods.

The DEA believes it has damaged or broken 49 of the 57 organizations originally targeted. "This does not represent the end of heroin in the U.S.A.," says Bensinger, "but this will have impact." The DEA had until recently been criticized for ineptitude and ineffectiveness. Now Bensinger, who revitalized the agency after taking it over last January, is urging the critics to look at the courts. He angrily reports: "One out of every three individuals sentenced for a narcotics charge in federal court last year was put on probation. One-third of those sentenced to prison received three years or less." Bensinger intends to keep a careful watch on his record catch to try to make sure they do not get away.

-Last May an apparent cocaine smuggler was not so lucky with a different condom technique. He had swallowed one loaded with coke and died of an overdose when it burst in his digestive tract.

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