LANSING – With a continuing supply of heroin from Latin America, and record opium production in Afghanistan, southern Michigan is experiencing more drugs on the streets and more overdoses, law enforcement officials say.

“One of the alarming trends of 2006 was the increase in cases initiated that involve heroin,” said Oakland County sheriff’s Lt. Joseph Quisenberry.

Those cases involved undercover buys, raids or both, said Quisenberry, who commands a drug task force of federal agencies, local police departments and the Oakland and Macomb sheriffs’ departments.

In Southwest Michigan, more heroin has been coming in over the last couple of years, and “when making arrests, we’re finding larger quantities in their possession,” said State Police Detective 1st Lt. Wayne Edington, who is based in Battle Creek.

Most heroin seized by Edington’s seven-county Southwest Enforcement Team comes through Detroit, but some arrives from Chicago, he said.

Rich Isaacson, a Detroit-based special agent for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), said lab tests of heroin that his agency purchases locally haven’t shown an increase of drugs from southwestern Asia, including Afghanistan.

Instead, South America remains the primary supplier here, according to Isaacson. “The majority is Columbian heroin.”

Cultivation of opium poppies—the source of heroin—reached  a record-high level last year in Afghanistan, where the U.S.-backed government controls only a small part of the country, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN agency, reported in March that poppy eradication is taking place in some provinces and that cultivation is declining in the central-northern part of the country.

In the south, however, production is rising and “out of control,” the agency said, citing corruption, terrorism, crime and large-scale narcotics operations.

Last October, Costa predicted a significant rise in the number of heroin overdose deaths internationally due to Afghanistan’s bumper opium crop—49 percent larger than in 2005.

And Oakland County’s Quisenberry said overdoses, some of them fatal, rose last year. He estimated there were 10 to 20 heroin-related deaths and about 100 accidental overdoses in Southeast Michigan.

A major factor in the overdoses is that heroin is sometimes laced with fentanyl to give the feeling that it’s of higher quality, he said. “The user is getting an increased rush but it’s highly dangerous.”

Issacson, of the DEA, said fentanyl is a “legitimate pharmaceutical estimated to be 50 times more potent than morphine,” and a small amount mixed into street heroin can prove fatal.

For example in February, a 37-year-old Detroit man received a 30 ½-year federal prison term for selling fatal doses of fentanyl-tainted heroin.

The growth in supplies of heroin appears slower further north in Michigan.

For example in the Lansing area, Detective 1st Lt. Tim Gill of the State Police said, “We haven’t seen huge increases as yet, but we’ve seen modest increases.”

Gill, who is assigned to the Tri-County Metro Narcotics Squad, said heroin has become more available over the past three to four years in Ingham, Clinton and Eaton counties.

However, he continued, “It’s something to keep an eye on, but it’s not an epidemic like meth, or like crack was in the 1980s and ‘90s.”

And Chet Wilson, a Traverse City-based State Police detective first lieutenant, said, “In our area, we have not noticed big increases at all.”

The most recent heroin-related case in Wilson’ territory developed in 2005 and 2006.

“A Detroit-area woman moved back home to the Bellaire area and several of her male friends come  up to the area and got a toe hold up there and began selling to the residents,” said Wilson, who oversees drug teams in northern Michigan.

“We made several arrests but it turned kind of ugly for a little while,” he said. “There were home invasions. There were guns involved.”