Pubdate: Sun, 03 Dec 2006
Source: Monitor, The (McAllen, TX)
Copyright: 2006 The Monitor
Contact:  http://www.themonitor.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1250
Author: James Osborne, Monitor Staff Writer
Note: James Osborne covers PSJA and general assignments for The Monitor

HOOKED ON THE BORDER

Patients at a south Reynosa drug rehab center sometimes walk up onto 
the roof to look out over the city before their evening meeting.

On clear evenings, they can see the bright lights of the city center, 
the maquilas where many of them used to work and the Rio Grande 
winding its way to the east.

Jose Alfredo Martinez, a thin, 36-year-old father of two struggling 
with a crack addiction, is one of those patients.

He can almost see his home neighborhood on the southern banks of the 
river. There, only 100 yards from the United States, narcotics 
designated for shipment to New York and Houston are selling like 
never before, causing an epidemic of drug addiction.

He pointed at a 16-year-old who is also addicted to crack.

"He lives just down the street from me. I know his parents," Martinez 
said in Spanish.

"A lot of traffickers live in the neighborhood and they bring their 
shipments there before it crosses the river. Most of it goes across, 
but when it sits there they sell off parts of it to us. They didn't 
before, but for the last five years you can get crack and cocaine, 
and now everybody's addicted."

Over the past five years, Reynosa and other Mexican cities on the 
U.S. border have experienced rapidly increasing rates of drug 
addiction, particularly crack addiction, in their poorer 
neighborhoods, said Alejandra Trevino, director of Centro de 
Attencion a la Juventid, a division of Mexico's ministry of health.

Considering the region's position as the primary point of entry for 
drug shipments into the United States, it's hardly surprising that 
drugs are readily available. What's changed recently is traffickers' 
willingness to sell in Mexico as opposed to the American cities where 
their product could command a much higher price.

The explanation in Mexico, supported by Trevino and other government 
officials, attributes the shift to increased border security by U.S. 
law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Drugs 
aren't getting through as easily, causing a virtual bottleneck of 
cocaine, marijuana and even heroin on the Mexican side of the border.

"Mexico is the place drug flows through and when they don't pass 
through they stay on the border," Trevino said in Spanish.

"You talk to the people in the neighborhoods and you hear this all the time."

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, while unwilling to comment 
on drug distribution inside Mexico, did say tighter security had hurt 
the drug cartels' ability to traffic across the border.

"It has, but the traffickers are very resourceful, so they adjust 
their trafficking and smuggling techniques to the resistance they get 
from U.S. law enforcement," said Will Glaspy, head of the DEA's McAllen office.

"Along any trafficking route in the world, eventually you will see 
addiction problems develop. The more drugs are around; the more 
people will experiment with them."

ADDICTION

Within the walls of the Reynosa branch of CRREAD, a Christian 
non-profit that provides free drug treatment across Mexico, residents 
are required to publicly renounce their addiction and catalog the 
multitude of misdeeds they committed while using three times a day.

The stories, uttered under a tin roof to the encouraging cheers from 
other residents, all bear a remarkable similarity to one another. A 
broken home, lots of time on the streets as a teenager, an offer of 
free drugs from a friend followed by increasing dependency until they 
ended up here, a dilapidated two-story building filled with more than 
50 addicts in various stages of withdrawal set in a middle class 
south Reynosa neighborhood.

In late October, Jose Pablo Colegio, a 16-year-old high school 
dropout, arrived at the center.

What had started as a light crack habit three years earlier had 
progressed to the point Colegio was smoking crack seven days a week. 
The skinny teenager with the ball cap turned backward paid for the 
drugs, which only cost him $10 a day, with a construction job his 
father helped him get.

He'd buy from a dealer living in an apartment near his family's home 
and smoke at the construction site, after work with friends, whenever 
the moment struck him. By October, his family had enough and dragged 
him off to CRREAD, a decision he did not protest.

"When I'm smoking it's great, but even then I'm thinking it's bad for 
me," Colegio said.

"When I first got here I didn't know what was going on, but they 
talked to me, showed me what I was doing wrong and what I needed to do."

Unlike most rehab facilities, CRREAD asks its patients to quit 
without the assistance of prescribed drugs to lessen the affects of 
withdrawal. Patients arrive and their bodies almost immediately begin 
craving whatever drug they were using, often leading to vomiting, 
diarrhea, insomnia and a heightened state of anxiety.

For their first three months patients are required to sleep behind 
locked gates to keep them from escaping. All they're given is a 
regimented schedule of group therapy sessions, chores and optional 
religious instruction -- though almost all of the residents have 
converted to Christianity since arriving at CRREAD.

"It's cold turkey, and it's difficult for them. Most of them won't 
sleep for a while," said Pablo Gaono, the 37-year-old co-founder of 
the center and a former heroin addict.

"We just have to keep telling them, they can stop doing the drugs. 
They need to see what's possible."

After three months patients have the option to leave the center, but 
many of them will stay on for months. Like all rehab programs, CRREAD 
will see a lot of them again in years to come.

Esteban Mata Rosales, a 30-year-old waiter who lives in the small 
town of Camargo, returned to the center for the second time a few 
weeks ago after a crack binge.

"The program, it's great when you're here because you have everyone 
around you, helping you," he said.

"You go home and there's no one there. First you break down and have 
a beer. Then it's a margarita, and you're like '   why not cocaine?' 
It's everywhere, even in my little town."

THE CRACK CRISIS

Commander Noe Hinojosa Villarreal keeps a photo album on his office 
computer at Tamaulipas state police headquarters. All of the photos 
are from criminal cases under investigation. One, a dead man lying on 
his back on a Reynosa sidewalk with a bullet hole in his forehead, 
catches his eye.

"We found crack in his pocket," Villarreal said. "We're seeing more 
and more of this.

"This is what crack is doing to our city."

Drug-related crime, largely burglaries and car thefts, have increased 
steadily over the past few years, Villarreal said. Up until 10 years 
ago Villarreal rarely saw people with drugs other than marijuana, and 
he attributes this latest trend in petty crime to the growing 
popularity of crack and other synthetic drugs.

"Before we didn't consume much of that here and now it's everywhere," 
Villarreal said in Spanish.

"I think a lot of it has to do with social problems. The family 
structure is on the decline, there's less work available because of 
all the people moving here."

What Villarreal, Trevino and other Mexican officials working on the 
drug addiction problem want to see is more money and time going 
toward prevention, namely drug education campaigns. During the U.S. 
crack epidemic in the 1980s, the U.S. government invested heavily in 
programs like DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), which have been 
credited in some circles with helping reduce the rate of drug abuse 
amongst adolescents.

"Prevention is the key," Trevino said. "We need all the society to 
understand that this is a health crisis."

"It's not going to be resolved in a year, it's going to take a long 
time. But the government is very interested in starting a permanent 
campaign, not just one day here and there."

When, if ever, Mexico would actually commit to such a program is questionable.

Traditionally, the Mexican government has offered little real support 
to drug education programs, said Rodrigo Guzman, a former coordinator 
with the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, a federal agency that 
operates in Mexico and the United States.

"It's a very different system over there. Basically, not enough money 
is going to prevention," Guzman said.

"The belief of prevention is we need to work on this issue from the 
earliest age, even from Pre-K, so they know the dangers. They are 
starting to show some interest over there, but I don't see a change 
anytime soon."
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