While Southeast Asian groups had success in trafficking heroin to the United States, they initially had difficulty arranging street level distribution. However, with the incarceration of Asian traffickers in American prisons during the 1970s, contacts between Asian and American prisoners developed.
The initial hurdle faced by Southeast Asian groups in smuggling heroin into the US was establishing a street-level distribution network, but they eventually overcame this challenge through the imprisonment of Asian traffickers in American prisons during the 1970s, which led to the formation of connections between Asian and American inmates.