Further moves toward opium poppy cultivation should be a source of concern, since it represents a continuing escalation of Latin America's already serious drug production problems. It is also a matter of concern to the United States, since the quality of South American heroin is improving. At the end of the year, the Mexican government had eradicated over 6,600 hectares, leaving approximately 5,800 hectares under cultivation. Mexico's cultivation levels in 1994 were the highest since 1989, when the Salinas government began an aggressive campaign to reduce opium production. Nigeria remains central to the worldwide heroin trade.
Nigerian traffickers smuggle Asian heroin to the United States and to Europe.
They are also among the leading carriers of Southeast and Southwest Asian heroin into the United States. Last year, Interpol listed Nigerian couriers as the third largest heroin smuggling group in the world. Nigerian traffickers are believed to be using Hungary as a transit point for drugs. Europe remains a steadily growing market for Southwest Asian heroin. The centuries-old Balkan smuggling route from Turkey to Austria has been expanded northward into Romania, Hungary, and the Czech and Slovak Republics, and southward through Croatia, Slovenia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Greece and Albania.