 Once again, business is booming, and tonight we'll examine how the heroin gets into the city and the problems it causes for law enforcement. We'll talk with the Department of Justice official who oversees drug enforcement, with an expert on drug abuse, and with a former addict. Good evening. Tonight we focus on a flower, and on its lethal impact. The poppy, an innocent little plant that produces a milky fluid, a natural juice called opium, which is the essence of heroin, the most destructive narcotic man has ever devised. A few weeks ago we reported on the Golden Triangle, Southeast Asia's fertile factory for the production of the poppy, the opium, and heroin. And tonight the other terminus in that sinister circuit, the flow of the world's most deadly drug into New York City. It reaches America from several origins through many ports of course, but nowhere does it flow more freely into the country than through New York City. And from there into the arms and the blood streams of thousands of addicts all over the nation, including perhaps your hometown. Bettina Gregory tells us why. There's more heroin being sold in the streets of New York than ever before. The Lower East Side has gone from push carts to pushers. The dealers are out there hawking their wares, heroin at $10 a bag. Charlie, we came down the street, I was offered at least four brands of heroin, something called red tape, yellow tape, stars, as well as the works, a hypodermic syringe to inject it. Is it like that here all the time? It's like this day and night, it's like the United States smiles through all kinds of water the dope comes through. To me, they're selling dope like they have a license. You walk down the block and they holler out the name of the product that they have. I believe I started getting dope just for the simple fact how available it was in the streets. In the city of New York. These are the real experts, heroin addicts who've just come in for treatment at Day Top Center, a drug rehabilitation program in Manhattan. And they say they know where all that heroin comes from. I'd say 90% or better comes in to Port Authority as far as the docks in New York, as far as Kennedy Airport. 600 planes a day land at Kennedy Airport. 150 ships a week are cleared in and out of New York Harbor. Authorities know they're bringing heroin in, at least five tons of it a year. That's the amount needed to supply the known number of heroin addicts in the U.S. There are two federal agencies trying to keep supplies of heroin off the streets. The Drug Enforcement Administration, known as the DEA, and the U.S. Custom Service. The DEA investigates and develops narcotics cases for federal prosecution. This agency has the overall responsibility of enforcing narcotics laws. But the Custom Service is the first line of defense. Customs tries to seize drugs as they're smuggled into the port of New York. The two federal agencies don't always work in perfect harmony. Their approaches to the drug problem differ and working agents tell us that makes finding the drugs more difficult. We checked the mass house, really checked the one on the other side. This is the U.S. Custom Search Team that's trying to do that. There used to be three teams in the port of New York going over ships. Now there's just one. No more than two ships a day can be searched. When they are, it's like looking for a needle in a five-story haystack that is the engine room. In this case, of the Santa Elena. The team comes up with a personal stash of marijuana, but they're acting on a tip a crew member is smuggling large quantities of cocaine in. A search of the four-deck reveals instruments to cut and weigh the coke. All right, listen, why don't we strip that apart up there and see if there's any coke secreted. But none of the drug itself. Perhaps more important than finding the drug is to find out who's doing the smuggling. That's the job of plainclothes customs patrol officers. There are just 14 of them to cover the ports of New York and New Jersey, as well as Long Island. They work out of this trailer in the shadow of the Empire State Building. Since there are so few of them, the head agent chooses carefully which ships to go after. We'll play Brooklyn until 7 or 8 o'clock tonight, okay? And if it doesn't look like there's any action, we'll all move over to Jersey and work Jersey for a while. And off they go in blue and white four-door volaris. Agents complain their identical cars are a short tip-off to drug dealers and defeat the whole purpose of undercover surveillance. In Brooklyn, the target is a ship in from Palermo, Italy. A Port Authority's claim is a major embarkation point for heroin. Surveillance is difficult. Prostitutes are known to visit ships and known to carry drugs off them, yet male agents cannot conduct body searches on women. The surveillance stretches on into dusk and then into dark, since drug smugglers can work day or night. They have time on their side. They can pick the time and the hour and the minute that they want to move the dope. They can walk outside to see if they've got customers around to see if they're going to get tapped down. They can come on and off the ship 20, 30 times. They know sooner or later they'll be able to get it off, because we just can't be on it 24 hours a day. At least we play the game. They have to try and beat us. So crew members who are stopped and frisked by the agents rarely have much to fear. The agents themselves are the first to admit, despite their best efforts, it's easy for drug dealers to succeed. Cargo containers are another story. Neither the undercover patrol team nor the ship's searchers are allowed to examine hundreds of thousands of cargo containers that arrive every year. Driver, can we see another cotton please? That's the responsibility of yet another branch of customs, inspectors who have an equally impossible job. And until recently, customs didn't even search gigantic container farms in New Jersey, like this one. They concentrated solely on this side of the river. Or all the best of their rivals on this side of the river. And when you consider that the Newark side of the river has an equal amount of vessels, we never really touched that up until, well, maybe a month ago, except on an ad hoc basis. Things are better in the port of New York. There, customs agents use dogs to sniff out illegal drugs. Even so, inspectors can't search every container. They can't even search a small fraction of the 175,000 containers that come into this terminal at Howland Hook Stappen Island. The inspectors do check out suspicious containers, like this shipment of 40,000 pounds of hockey pucks. But to find illegal drugs, they usually have to rely on tips and information. The containers are a good hiding place. Last October, they discovered 46 pounds of heroin hidden in a container, much like this one. The heroin was hidden in the pedestal base of this table, shipped in from Palermo, Italy. This is the largest seizure of heroin in the last year. Officials say one reason there aren't more major seizures is that DEA and customs don't always work in perfect partnership. To run an effective investigation, one that not only gets the drugs, but also the drug smugglers, customs needs the cooperation of DEA. Almost 200 DEA agents work in New York City, but only 20 agents are assigned to cover Kennedy as well as LaGuardia airports. There, customs and DEA have the responsibility of covering the huge cargo terminals, not to mention the luggage which comes off the planes. Just one DEA agent is assigned to help customs cover the entire seaport of New York. Don Quick runs the DEA's port operation. How is it possible for DEA to cover the port of New York and all those thousands of ships and thousands of cargo containers with just one agent? I don't have an answer for that. Since that interview, that one agent has been pulled from the seaport, and the 14 customs officers who worked in this trailer have been broken into smaller units to cover bigger territory. Faced with budget cuts, as all agencies are, customs officials concede more could be done if there were better cooperation within the agency. Part of the major frustration that has occurred is really trying to break down some of the more traditional lines that we've had within customs and get the entities to work together. The very best that this agency can hope for is to have to do what appears to be an expanding job with the same resources and more than likely it's going to be fewer resources. And I find that... I repeat, bigger is not better. But working agents who can't appear on camera for fear of losing their jobs in both the DEA and customs say right now the agencies are hopelessly understaffed and they charge their bosses are often more interested in fighting for a piece of the drug investigation action than they are in cooperating with their sister agencies. In their view, the result is the port of New York is wide open and the streets of New York are full of heroin. The heroin epidemic in New York City is not a joke. It's very real. It is definitely on a much larger proportion than it was during the 60s. A lot of kids who would be afraid to inject themselves, can snort it and get high. And I think that the time has come that people have to stop turning their heads and make like it's not a major issue. It is definitely a major issue as something has to be done about it. Attorney General of the United States. He has authority over the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration. And in our New York studios, a man who probably knows as much about the statistics of drug abuses anybody in the country, Dr. Douglas Lipton, Chief of Research for the New York State Division of Substance Abuse. Mr. Giuliani, looking back at Bettina Gregory's report and just looking at some of the statistics that she cited, one DEA agent for the whole port of New York, 20 customs agents at JFK, how can you stop the import of heroin with that kind of defense? It seems to me you're going up against the Pittsburgh Steelers with the St. Jude Junior High School defensive line. The problem is no doubt a very difficult one, but the way to attack it and the way to deal with it is to try to coordinate the efforts of all of the federal agencies and the state and local agencies that have responsibilities in this area. One of the things that wasn't mentioned is the State Department and the effort that they can bring to bear on this problem by dealing with drugs right at the source. That's a very, very important aspect in having a real impact on the flow of heroin into this country. Also, it's tragic that if in the past customs and DEA have not cooperated together, they both have the same goal, they both have the same mission, and it's our intention to make certain that they do cooperate together. Dr. Lipton, what would be your counsel to Mr. Giuliani? First of all, there has to be a recognition that the states in the Northeast, particularly, are being devastated by this amount of heroin, that unless the federal government provides relief at a time when they're talking only about cuts, we're going to see far more problems, far more of our youngsters devastated, dead, torn up in institutions. We've got to work together and we've got to cooperate. Just recently, when the federal government was promising us and recognizing that we had a very serious problem, they promised us money and then they turned around and gave us nothing and now we're faced with constant cuts. And Dr. Lipton, there is a report from the transition team of the Reagan administration that seeks to cut $200 million out of drug enforcement administration cost and cut the personnel by 3,000 by merging this whole operation into the FBI. What do you think of that? Well, the DEA has tried hard. We've worked together with the DEA and shared intelligence reports. I can't believe that the FBI is going to be able to switch over that quickly. We'll probably fall into a hiatus where the street elements, the traffickers will probably gain a foothold even stronger than before. Mr. Giuliani, the Reagan administration is talking now about these cuts, about the merger. How likely is that and what will be the impact on drug enforcement in this country? I think involvement of the FBI in drug enforcement would be a very valuable asset. The FBI have agents who can deal with financial investigations. They have a wide range of resources. Really, the effort has to be to try to involve many different agencies, state, federal, local in the drug effort and not just rely solely on DEA or solely on customs. It's unfair to place the entire burden of this on them. The State Department has a role in this, the FBI has a role in this and coordination with state and local law enforcement is probably, at least on the domestic side, the critical part of all this. What is the role you see for the FBI, Mr. Giuliani? As you know, the FBI agents have never been too adept at going undercover and undercover is the best way it seems to break up these importation rings. That is one way to do it and it is true that there have been very effective cases made that way. However, a large number of cases that can be made involve going after the assets, going after the people who finance drug deals. The FBI has a good deal of expertise in that area. I also think that you're thinking about the FBI five, six years ago and not the FBI of today which has demonstrated a good deal of expertise in dealing with undercover investigations. Dr. Lipton, the Reagan Administration also has a theory that this sort of problem can be dealt with better at the local level so that New York City police will handle New York City drug problems. Is that a proper way to approach a problem of this magnitude? The New York City Narcotics Bureau is an excellent department with very dedicated personnel. They've been handicapped by the division of labor that now exists. The DEA tosses the marijuana cases to the New York City Police Department and they stay with the big traffickers. Consequently, the City Police Department has not been that active in pursuing the large felony operators, the ones who are managing the total operation. I think one of the points that Mr. Giuliani ought to understand is that the present Reagan Administration has not yet selected a State Department officer in charge of international narcotics matters. Mr. Giuliani, why is that? That's not so. I think that's absolutely incorrect. The Reagan Administration has selected such a person and he's a person with a good deal of expertise and background in this very problem. I think there has been just a total misunderstanding of what the aim of this Administration is. Heroin addiction, heroin trafficking is probably the single most important criminal problem that we have in many parts of the United States. There is no doubt that there is a total commitment on the part of this Administration to deal with that and to deal with it effectively. We don't think it has been dealt with effectively over the last four years and we think that you're showing the results of that. Dr. Lipton, indeed. I can't agree more that we ought to cooperate and that I welcome any statement on the part of the DEA or the Department of Justice or the FBI that they're going to put their hearts into this. We have not seen that kind of cooperation in the past. Here in this broadcast, Bettina Gregory introduced us to a number of former heroin addicts under treatment now at the Daytop Village, a drug rehabilitation center in New York City. It's offered as an option to some addicts who otherwise would go to jail. And standing by now at Daytop Village is a man who chose that option, Anthony Broder. Mr. Broder, let's hope this doesn't happen. Let's say that you're not able to break the habit. How easy would it be for you to get back on heroin in New York? Well, I think it would be a matter of hours after leaving Daytop. It's just so readily available now. It comes down to a question of not where to get it, but what brand to buy. You can go into about any street in New York on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Uptown Manhattan. And that seems to be the biggest problem with people with what brand to buy. Well, you've dealt with police. You were busted 20 times. Is that right? About. They're abouts. They're not trying in New York. What is the problem? Well, there's efforts being made, but what happens is right now they're just taking people off the street. They're really not going for the upper echelon, if you want to call it that. They're going for street addicts. They're going for people that are just touters. They're really not the people that are bringing the dope in. What is the relationship between addicts like you, who I assume perhaps wrongly, that you may have been involved in other crimes in order to support your habit? Is that true? Yes, that is true. What is the relationship between addicts like you and middle class, upper middle class, establishment type use of recreational drugs in this country, cocaine and quailudes and even heroin to some extent? Well, heroin abuse or heroin addiction becomes an all-encompassing thing. That is all there is to your lifestyle at the moment. You just wake up and that's the first thing you think of and anything you do, all your efforts are directed at obtaining heroin and it's not a social activity anymore. It becomes a very individually oriented type of thing. It's not social at all. Well, I suppose my question was, Mr. Broder, are you suggesting that perhaps the New York police or law enforcement authorities elsewhere are not interested in enforcing drug laws against those who use drugs quote recreationally as opposed to addicts? I think that they aim their, most of the focus is being placed on recreational drugs as opposed to hard drugs, which does produce most of the crime. I think the priorities are really out of whack. Well, from your perspective then, is the problem solvable? Yes, definitely. And what are the key ingredients to solving the problem of heroin addiction in this country? I would say some sort of major sweep involving a lot of investigative work, you know, from the top down, instead of working the way they are now from the bottom up where really no results are being obtained. Well, what is the end of this then? If there's more heroin available now, I was just looking at statistics today. Apparently it's either $60 billion a year or $78 billion a year, which is larger than the gross national product of several countries that I noticed. What's the end of this? More addicts? More crime? Well, right now what seems to be happening is the quality of heroin is actually getting better than it was five, six years ago. Socially, the climate is that people are different types of people who are being attracted to heroin use because of its availability, and it is getting worse. It's not getting better. Mr. Broder, we've got about 15 seconds now. Can you tell us which is more important? If you've got a dollar to invest, is it in rehabilitation or is it in enforcement? At this point right now I'd say rehabilitation. Thank you for being with us tonight, Mr. Broder.