MEXICO'S NEXT WAR ON DRUGS

Addiction Skyrockets As Drugs Bound The US Circulate Within Mexico.

Mexico City - Gerardo Flores was 16 when he first was offered
marijuana, and by the time he was 19 he had tried ecstasy, LSD, and
cocaine. He had been arrested for stealing and expelled from school.

This is the new face of drug addiction in Mexico.

Today the country finds itself not just in a battle with drug
traffickers vying for lucrative routes into the US, but with a
domestic consumption problem that is ensnaring youngsters such as Mr.
Flores. Fortified borders and a fracturing of drug cartels have led
to a glut of drugs in Mexico, causing prices to drop and addiction
rates to skyrocket. The number of addicts has grown in just six years
by more than 50 percent, from 300,000 to 465,000, according to
government statistics.

"There's been a big change in society; consumers are as young as 10
years old," says Lina Raquel Sotres, a social worker and head of a
government-run recovery clinic in Mexico City. "All of the drugs that
aren't accepted up north are consumed here. The drugs get used one
way or another."

Mexico is the main transit point for drugs from South America:
Roughly 90 percent of cocaine consumed in the United States goes
first through Mexico, according to the US State Department.

Stricter US border enforcement, particularly after 9/11, means that
drugs are more available - in corner stores, outside schools, in
dance clubs, even at all-night flower stalls. "The border was
closed," says Marcela Lopez Cabrera, the director of a private
recovery clinic called Monte Fenix in Mexico City, "and the drugs
stayed in Mexico."

And many experts say that as the government has cracked down on
cartels, they have splintered, generating more dealers, especially at
lower levels. Often those dealers are paid not in dollars but in
drugs, says Haydee Rosovsky, the former head of Mexico's commission
on addiction.

More availability means cheaper drugs. These days the price of a gram
of cocaine is between 150 and 200 pesos ($11 to $15), says Benjamin
Garcia, who works at Monte Fenix, while crack is a tenth of that. In
the early 1990s, the price of cocaine was nearly three times as expensive.

"You can get it anywhere," says Flores, who, as a junior high
student, had a network of friends from whom he could buy drugs.

Cocaine use has steadily increased over the past decade, while crack
use has exploded in the past few years. Methanphetamine consumption
is a growing public health concern, too, particularly in the border
towns of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, says Ricardo Sanchez, who heads
the research department for a network of 110 government clinics that
treat addiction.

The percentage of those who have tried drugs at least once in their
life rose from just over 5 percent in 2002 to 6 percent last year, or
by 1 million users. Each year they are younger, says Mr. Sanchez.

Blanca Garibay and her husband Rodolfo Garcia moved to Mexico City
three years ago from a tiny town, and their teenage son immediately
became friendly with local sellers. On a recent day they sat in a
government-run treatment center waiting for their son - who did not
show up. "It's frustrating, one day you advance, the next you
regress," says Ms. Garibay. "I worry every day about what this will
lead to, if it will lead to jail.... I do regret moving here and
think about moving somewhere where drugs aren't so accessible."

But drugs are starting to appear across Mexico, and one reason is the
increased deportation of migrants who lived in the US. For example,
says Sanchez, in 2002, the agency began to hear cases of heroine use
in Puebla, Mexico, the hometown of many New York immigrants.

While the government has allocated most of its resources to combating
the supply side of the problem, it is now focusing on prevention and
addiction, opening up more than 300 clinics. It's not enough, says
Ms. Rosovsky. "There had been a kind of institutional denial in the past."

But clinics alone will not solve the problem. There is a dearth of
trained professionals, says Ms. Lopez Cabrera. Her clinic offers
two-year courses for doctors and nurses in drug addiction treatment.
But the supply of drug counselors pales in comparison with the
numbers needing help.

And stigmas continue to stand in the way of treatment. Ms. Sotres
says that many parents come to her clinic unable to accept the fact
that their children have addiction problems.

Garibay is confronting her son's problem head-on, but has not told
her family about it. She says: "I'm afraid of the rejection, what
they'll say about us."