Posted on 02/28/2004 2:25:58 AM PST by sarcasm
MEXICO CITY -- Julio Cesar Mondragon started smoking crack cocaine on the streets of his working-class Mexico City neighborhood when he was 15. Minimum-wage jobs didn't pay enough to support his habit, so he took to carjacking and mugging with an armed gang.
"I was so strung out, I couldn't see what I was doing and how I was hurting people, particularly my own family," said Mondragon, a burly 25-year-old who has been clean for a year.
Mexicans once considered cocaine addiction a U.S. problem. Drug analysts even had a saying: "The Colombians produce it, the Mexicans traffic it and the Americans take it." Now the government acknowledges narcotics trafficking to the United States has left thousands of addicts in Mexico.
In the last decade, cocaine and crack use has risen dramatically among Mexicans of all backgrounds, according to experts. The epidemic has fueled family breakups and sparked a crime wave in Mexico's urban areas, authorities say.
"It's a problem that can devour sections of society. We have to face it head-on," said Victor Guisa, head of the government's rehabilitation centers.
Since 1990, the percentage of inmates at government clinics with cocaine or crack problems has climbed from 12 to 70. Furthermore, drug arrests have increased from an average of 15,000 per year in the 1990s to an average of 25,000 a year since 2001, according to Assistant Attorney General Gilberto Higuera.
Cocaine distribution in Mexico is inextricably linked to the traffic to the United States, authorities and experts say. Mexican cartels smuggling over the northern border often pay their lieutenants in cocaine instead of cash, Higuera said. These lieutenants have worked hard to develop local markets, he said.
Last month, Higuera headed a bust on a Mexico City warehouse packed with 2 tons of cocaine, which would fetch more $100 million in the United States. During the raid, police nabbed a Colombian, members of a Mexican smuggling cartel and mobsters believed to be selling drugs in Mexico City -- proof of links between local and international drug trade.
Mexico became a major trafficking point in the 1990s, says narcotics expert Bruce Bagley from the University of Miami. Colombian crime organizations used to ship most cocaine straight to the United States. But after the collapse of the Medellin and Cali cartels, largely because of U.S. pressure, the Colombians turned to Mexican traffickers, Bagley said.
"In 1990, only 20 percent of cocaine bound for America passed through Mexico; by 1997 it was 80 percent," Bagley said. "When Mexico became a major pipeline for cocaine, it was only a matter of time before it spilled into its cities."
Known in Mexico City as piedras or puntos, crack has become an affordable high for the urban poor. Cocaine cooked with baking soda produces crystal-like stones, which can be smoked through a pipe or empty beer can. It is stronger and more addictive than the powder form. A single dose sells for as little as $1.40 in the capital.
Regular users build a tolerance to crack and eventually need to smoke tens or hundreds of rocks a day to feed their addiction, driving many into crime, according to Guisa. Likewise, security experts say drug use and an economic slowdown are the driving forces behind the crime wave.
In 1990, 254 offenses a day, on average, were reported in Mexico City, according to police. Last year there were 477.
In the Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa, home to 2 million people, there are more than 450 tienditas -- or drug-selling points, according to Víctor Hugo Cirigo, the precinct chief. These tienditas range from street corners to whole apartment complexes where extended families sell narcotics, authorities say. Higuera said some police accept bribes to protect dealers and their tienditas.
Furthermore, under Mexican law, people caught with small quantities of any drug cannot be charged if they can prove it is for personal use. Arrests are rare for people carrying less than 5 grams of cocaine, Higuera said.
"Criminal gangs take advantage of this legislation by sending dealers onto the street with just a few rocks, knowing they are immune from prosecution," Higuera said.
Guisa said, however, that it would be a waste of police time and money to arrest addicts for drug possession. "The law correctly recognizes that addiction is a disease, not a crime," he said.
Higuera says stronger drug laws, tougher sentencing on users and dealers, and police reform can stop the crack epidemic. But Guisa says the solution is in education. He has worked extensively with schools to give drug awareness programs and says teenagers have responded positively.
Saulo Sanchez, 18, managed to give up crack last year when his mother placed him in a private rehab center. But he says he feels the temptation to smoke it every day.
"I have to stay away from my old friends, so I don't get close to drugs," said Saulo, who is from a middle-class neighborhood. "Most of those cocos (crack addicts) are going to die hooked."
It's really our fault. If it wasn't for the evil U.S. then all would be well witht the world. Another retching read from the great and noble world of Mexican liberation.
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