SUBSCRIBE TODAY!!!

On December 31, Reuters News Service reported that New England is now the fastest-growing US market for Colombian heroin. George Festa, DEA special agent in charge of New England told Reuters "The purity of the product is what really concerns us. We've made street buys with purity of 95%, even 97%."

That level of purity simply dwarfs the potency of heroin available in the past. This trend has had two major effects. The first is that heroin can now be snorted or smoked, rather than injected, which tends to cut down on the sharing of syringes, and thus the spread of AIDS. The other side, however, is that the ability to use heroin without injecting it could lure new users who would not have tried the drug otherwise. Reuters reports that bags of heroin are available on the streets of Boston for as little as $4. The skyrocketing purity, the low price, and the fact that large quantities of Colombian heroin are making it all the way up to New England is a striking indication of just how ineffective the strategies of interdiction and enforcement have been in controlling the black market.

George Kenney, a long-time harm-reduction advocate now working with Community of Color Outreach in Roxbury Massachusetts, told The Week Online, "There's certainly no shortage of heroin on the streets up here, and they're right, it is cheap. The state health department has finally started a pilot needle exchange program, and it seems to be going well, but its not enough to address the problem. There are so many sea ports up here, its just impossible to keep the stuff out. We need to get less punitive, and start spending more time thinking about how to reach people where they are, instead of threatening them and chasing them back into the shadows, so that we can help them to move into recovery, or at least help them to stabilize their lives so that they can prepare to make the decision to get clean."

	Please make a generous donation to support Drug War Chronicle in 2007!

PERMISSION to reprint or redistribute any or all of the contents of Drug War Chronicle (formerly The Week Online with DRCNet is hereby granted. We ask that any use of these materials include proper credit and, where appropriate, a link to one or more of our web sites. If your publication customarily pays for publication, DRCNet requests checks payable to the organization. If your publication does not pay for materials, you are free to use the materials gratis. In all cases, we request notification for our records, including physical copies where material has appeared in print. Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202) 293-8344 (fax), e-mail [email protected]. Thank you.

Articles of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.

Out from the Shadows HEA Drug Provision Drug War Chronicle Perry Fund DRCNet en Español Speakeasy Blogs About Us Home Why Legalization? NJ Racial Profiling Archive Subscribe Donate DRCNet em Português Latest News Drug Library Search special friends links: SSDP - Flex Your Rights - IAL - Drug War Facts StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network (DRCNet) 1623 Connecticut Ave., NW, 3rd Floor, Washington DC 20009 Phone (202) 293-8340 Fax (202) 293-8344 [email protected]