FOR this week's cover story on the war against heroin, TIME correspondents talked not only with narcotics agents round the world but with the growers, smugglers and dealers they pursue. It was reporting on a life-and-death matter to hundreds of thousands of people, and it had a generous share of dramatic moments.

Correspondent James Willwerth was with narcotics agents in Manhattan last week when they were tipped off about an incoming shipment of drugs. Willwerth accompanied the agents to an observation post on the third floor of New York's Beekman Downtown Hospital and witnessed on the street below a long session of bargaining between several Chinese drug traffickers and an undercover agent with $200,000 in cash. The final "connection" took place several blocks away, followed within minutes by flashing police lights, drawn guns, and the biggest New York heroin haul of the summer.

In Montreal, Stringer Kendal Windeyer had a few minutes of excitement after interviewing a heroin dealer in a local bar. Two undercover agents at a nearby table unexpectedly approached and arrested the pusher. As Windeyer fumbled for change to pay for the drinks and follow the police, he discovered in his pocket three glassine bags that had been planted there by his guest. Worried that the police would question him as soon as they found their suspect "clean," Windeyer went straight to the men's room. "Somewhere in the sewage system of western Montreal," he reports, "there is a couple of hundred dollars worth of heroin bobbing around in plastic bags."

Correspondent Charles Eisendrath journeyed to the opium-rich Afyon province of Turkey to talk with poppy farmers (see cut). Eisendrath also interviewed "Mehmet," a former Turkish smuggler who had turned informer for the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. "The sweat bubbled in the creases of his forehead whenever Mehmet told specific details about his job," Eisendrath recalls. Shortly afterward Mehmet disappeared mysteriously from the BNDD network--presumably a casualty. Says Eisendrath: "In a way the sickness--and attempted cure--of the U.S. drug problem had confused Mehmet, and quite possibly destroyed him."

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