Active Asian gang members were initially recruited from trained interviewers' personal contacts with youth-serving agencies in the Chinese and Vietnamese community. Thirty-seven percent of the 64 interviews with active members came from social agency referrals. The interview process involved two stages. In the first stage, the respondent answered a series of questions from a quantitative schedule. The second stage involved a tape- recorded session in which members responded to a semistructured guide about life in the gang. The study did not reveal a formal social organization for trafficking heroin in the San Francisco area among the Asian gangs studied. Instead, the findings suggest that heroin trafficking in the San Francisco area is best understood in terms of individual opportunities and associational networks. Several of the gang members disapproved of drug dealing as well as drug use. Based on the findings, the study suggests that Asian gang members are similar to other ethnic gang members and should be considered and understood within larger discussions of ethnic gangs. 4 tables, 3 notes, and 54 references