DRUGS - Piling up behind Mexican, Guatemalan borders

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Evidence suggests drugs are piling up behind Mexican, Guatemalan borders

By Mark Stevenson, Associated Press, 11/22/2001 03:15

MEXICO CITY (AP) As the United States tightens security at its borders in response to the September terror attacks, illegal drugs are piling up in Central America and traffickers are finding new consumers in what were once known as ''producer'' countries.

Long a transit country where drugs passed through to an insatiable U.S. market, Mexico has seen addictions to hard drugs skyrocket over the past decade. Now addicts are congregating in border towns where drugs are widely available and law enforcement often looks the other way.

''The drugs have to follow one of two routes,'' said Dr. Guido Belsasso, head of Mexico's National Council on Addictions.

''Either they build up in Mexico, to a lesser extent, and in Guatemala, where reports indicate a large quantity of drugs are piling up, or the traffickers look to other routes, in the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific,'' Belsasso said. Guatemalan authorities had no immediate comment.

Some worry that with U.S. Coast Guard patrol boats pulled back to protect American ports following the terror attacks, traffickers may return to the Pacific coast once a favorite route.

''Obviously, if you're going to pull Coast Guard assets back from there, you don't have to be a master strategist to figure out it might be easier to run it that way now,'' said acting U.S. drug czar Edward Jurith during a visit to Mexico this month.

For most of the last decade, America had only one symbolic ''war,'' the war on drugs. But the terror attacks changed that.

Now, Jurith says, the country has to juggle the requirements of both battles, while remembering that drug-related suicides and accidents kill 52,000 Americans per year.

Under President Vicente Fox, the Mexican government also has abandoned its old stance of accusing the United States of not doing enough to reduce American drug consumption, long considered the catalyst of the drug trade.

''We can't speak anymore in terms of a 'consumer country' and a 'producer country.' Mexico is a consumer,'' said Adolfo Aguilar, Fox's national security adviser.

Recent studies indicate 5.4 percent of adolescents in Mexico have tried cocaine, and the country has at least 450,000 drug addicts in all.

It is that increased consumption still about four times lower, per capita, than that of the United States that worries Mexican officials.

Belsasso said ''there are some reports of increased availability of drugs (in Mexico) after the tightening of security at the border.''

Arturo Gonzalez Rascon, chief prosecutor in northern Chihuahua state, said the drug bottleneck ''has created additional problems for us at a time when we are already stretched to the limit.''

Belsasso said that heroin use previously confined to northern border towns seems to be on the rise in central and western Mexico. Immigrants returning from the United States in rising numbers since Sept. 11 may bring addictive behaviors home to their small towns.

''Working in the fields up there, some pick up addictions to alcohol, cocaine or heroin,'' Belsasso said. ''These agricultural workers, when they return to Mexico, help pass these addictions on to other people and their communities.''

But the cities along the U.S. border still lead Mexico's drug use. Tijuana has the highest consumption of illegal drugs in the country three times the national average, according to the government. The border cities of Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros are close behind.

Recovered heroin addict Jose Luis Avalos, who runs a drug rehabilitation center in Tijuana, said the sealed border exacerbates Mexico's dilemma.

''We already have the problem but it can get worse,'' he said.

Avalos' group, the Integral Recovery Center for Alcoholic and Drug Addicts, is considered among the best of a growing number of treatment centers. Many are poorly run and abusive to inmates, officials say.

Several people have died while in rehabilitation in the past few years, including some who did not receive proper medical care after overdosing, state human rights prosecutor Raul Ramirez said.

He blames the government for not doing enough for addicts. The failure to clean up corruption has fueled the problem, he said. Police deny involvement, but users say they pay officers to leave them alone.

''The police know where the drugs are being produced, where the heroin, the cocaine are being distributed. They go by each week and get paid themselves,'' Ramirez said. ''The problem is extraordinarily complex.''

-- Anonymous, November 22, 2001


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