Opium's Lethal Return

By late next September, the soft, white flowers will once more bloom in the valleys and flatlands of Turkey's Anatolian heartland. For the region's farmers, the harvest of poppies will mean a return to a treasured crop that yields such vital uses as morphine, fuel, cooking oil and animal feed. But angered U.S.

drug and law enforcement officials also fear that Turkey's decision last week to resume planting opium poppies after a two-year prohibition will soon cause another deadly byproduct, "Turkish white" heroin, to appear back on the streets of New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Turkey's decision to legalize poppy crops represents the worst setback yet in what has been an effective Nixon Administration crusade against the worldwide drug trade. Before Turkey originally agreed to halt its planting in return for a threeyear, $35 million aid program from the U.S., its annual crops followed a trail that led through the processing labs of Marseille ("the French connection") to the U.S. Turkish-grown heroin accounted for fully 80% of the total U.S. supply.

With limited supplies, increased enforcement by U.S. agents, and a vigorous federal antidrug educational program, the number of U.S. addicts dramatically fell from around 600,000 in 1971 to 200,000 this year. American officials are convinced that a critical factor was the Turkish link. Its revival now threatens the entire control program.

The chilling prospect of a revived drug network delivering its small packets of white powder back into the bloodstream of the nation's cities has caused the House Foreign Affairs Committee to call a meeting this month. The prime topic: a bill to suspend the $236 million military-and economic-aid program to Turkey unless poppy growing is halted. But such retaliation is unlikely. Turkish officials have already suggested that if U.S. aid is cut off, the country will consider removal of the 24 American military installations based there as part of the NATO defense system.

Way of Life. Turkey's decision to end its ban on opium production was based on compelling--if shortsighted --domestic considerations. The U.S.

compensation to the peasant was ten times more than the profit earned from the annual legal exports of opium--but far less than the farmers could make on the illicit market. Moreover, poppy growing had been a way of life for centuries for 100,000 Turks, and neither the U.S. or Turkey was able to find a substitute crop for them to cultivate profitably. With no addiction problem in Turkey, the growers saw themselves as victims of an "American problem."

Turkey insists that it will closely supervise the crops. U.S. officials are less sanguine, for good reason. Turkey has been notoriously lax in controlling opium smuggling in the past, and its actions so far hardly indicate that it will change.

It has already turned production back to the private two-acre farms rather than trying to limit opium growing to state-run agricultural enterprises, where control is easier. It has also granted amnesty to hundreds of convicted opium smugglers. All this adds up to a triumph for Turkish pride and nationalism--and Turkey's deadly white flower.

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