Pubdate: Sun, 04 Nov 2001
Source: Salt Lake Tribune (UT)
Copyright: 2001 The Salt Lake Tribune
Contact:  http://www.sltrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/383
Author: Mary Jordan, The Washington Post

MEXICO CONFRONTS ITS DRUG PROBLEM

TIJUANA, Mexico -- Berenice Arellano Gil celebrated her 29th birthday by 
doing what she does most days: She slipped $3 into another addict's hand on 
a downtown street corner and bought a two-inch vial filled with crack cocaine.

"I feel like a dog running wild on the freeway, not knowing if I am going 
to make it off the road alive," she said, cupping her hands around the 
smoking white powder and inhaling deeply, letting the crack fill her lungs 
and surge into her brain.

She opened her glassy eyes, looked toward the United States, beyond a metal 
fence a few yards away, and her story tumbled out. She had a good life once 
in Los Angeles, installing carpet for $10 an hour, but she got caught and 
deported and despair led to crack, and at least now she has cut back and is 
spending only $10 a day on her habit instead of the $100 she used to waste, 
and she hates her job making $5 a day working in a restaurant but will 
never, never, never again have sex with a stranger to make a few bucks for 
crack, and you just can't believe how hard it is to get unhooked.

"It's my birthday, you know," she said.

Mexico used to think people like Arellano were an American nightmare. By 
Mexico's reckoning, Americans were the ones using the drugs, and their 
insatiable demand was the reason that violent cartels -- which continue to 
conduct daily assassinations on the border -- existed here. Places like 
Tijuana, where people didn't even use drugs, were suffering because 
cokeheads from Malibu to Maine couldn't get enough, it was said.

But that's changing fast. Mexico is now not only the major transit point 
for drugs shipped into the United States, it has a growing demand problem 
of its own. While consumption here remains far below that in the United 
States, it began climbing at an alarming rate in the mid-1990s.

This gritty city of 1.2 million is Mexico's drug-use capital. Between 1993 
and 1998, government surveys found a fivefold increase in the number of 
people saying they had used drugs in the past month. For 1998, the last 
year the survey was conducted, 15 percent of Tijuana youths said they had 
tried cocaine, heroin or other drugs -- three times the national average.

Since then, far more people have begun trying drugs, particularly crystal 
methamphetamine. There are now hundreds of Tijuana crack houses, alleyways 
and street corners where people gather to snort, smoke or inject drugs.

"It's a dramatic problem affecting the quality of life here," said Victor 
Clark Alfaro, a human-rights advocate. "Many of these people steal to get 
money for drugs. People are afraid of what people will do when they are 
high on crack and crystal meth."

Poor addicts are most visible because they often use drugs in the street, 
he said. But middle-class children are taking them, too: in homes and 
discos and at parties.

The increased drug use is generally traced to a change in the practices of 
Mexican traffickers who ship drugs into the United States. In the 
mid-1990s, according to Mexican law enforcement officials, traffickers 
started paying local employees -- those who handled such jobs as fueling 
planes and renting warehouses -- partly in drugs. Those people needed to 
create their own market, and they began selling drugs in their home towns.

And drugs are cheaper. Drugs used to be beyond the means of poor youths 
from the Tijuana barrios, but a vial of crack now sells for as little as 
$2, and a heroin injection costs $5 to $10, depending on quality, according 
to interviews with addicts here. They said the most popular drug is the 
cheapest: crystal methamphetamine, or "ice," a synthetic drug that goes for 
$1 to $2 a hit.

Some Mexican law enforcement officials say the problem has become far worse 
since the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States. U.S. border 
security has sharply increased, making it harder for the cartels to move 
drugs across the border. That has led to concern that the backlog is being 
dumped in Mexican towns, where youths have a growing appetite for drugs.

U.S. law enforcement officials say they doubt that border security has 
curtailed drug trafficking, noting that U.S. street prices for drugs 
haven't risen, a sign of steady supply.

But Pedro Jose Penaloza, who oversees crime prevention efforts in Mexico's 
attorney general's office, recently said that "the consumption of cocaine 
in the entire country has risen alarmingly since the Sept. 11 attacks." He 
said the "sealing of the northern border by the United States" has led 
traffickers to drop the price of cocaine and other drugs normally destined 
for the United States and flood the market in Mexico.

In Mexico, drug consumption is seen largely as a health problem and is 
rarely prosecuted. In most places, it is not a crime to consume small 
amounts. But despite concern over health, the government has devoted little 
money to treatment or rehabilitation, focusing instead on prevention 
efforts, which are far less expensive.

Clark Alfaro said there are about 80,000 addicts in Tijuana and the city's 
50 private rehabilitation centers have room for 3,000. To many, these 
places, often run by former addicts or church workers with no formal 
training in rehabilitation, are notorious for harsh treatment.

Two people who have been treated in such centers said in interviews that 
techniques in private centers include dousing addicts with ice- cold water, 
beating them and chaining them to make sure they do not flee. Several 
Tijuana newspapers recently ran photos of teen-age addicts chained down in 
one of the centers. The youths had been placed there with the permission of 
their parents, who said they did not know where else to turn.

Such techniques are "not uncommon" in the private centers, said Enrique 
Durantes, a psychiatrist who heads Tijuana's drug prevention program in the 
city's health ministry. "We are totally against this method."

He said more federal funding is desperately needed to open rehabilitation 
centers that use accepted treatment techniques. Last year, the federal 
government issued national regulations and guidelines for drug 
rehabilitation centers, but officials said there has been little effort to 
enforce them.

"The government is leaving in the hands of (private groups) the process of 
rehabilitation," Alfaro said. "They are closing their eyes to human-rights 
violations that occur there."

Arellano, the crack addict, said she would not enter a private 
rehabilitation center. "They are horrible. It's not like you have in the 
States. No, no, never, never, will I go into one of those places. I must 
try to get unhooked myself."
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