RURAL NEW MEXICO COUNTY BATTLES IMAGE AS DRUG HAVEN

Poverty, geography, and a tight community contribute to an entrenched
narcotics problem.

ESPANOLA, N.M.

Twice a week, an ambulance pulls into the parking lot of the Big Rock
shopping center to hand out something not usually found in bulk
quantities in small US towns: clean needles for heroin addicts.

It is just one example of a surprising - and disturbing - fact: The
US area with the highest drug-mortality rate per capita isn't New
York, Los Angeles, or any other major city. It is this sparse, rural
county flanked by the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New
Mexico.

The reasons for the startling statistic are as varied as they are
entrenched. One is location. Rio Arriba County lies along the
drug-smuggling route from Mexico to Denver. Between here and Santa Fe
- - where many people drive to work - there's little but 30 miles of
scrub pine, adobe houses, and blacktop. With people tacking on long
commutes at the end of their work days, that leaves "a lot of
unsupervised kids," says Lauren Reichelt, director of the Rio Arriba
County Department of Health and Human Services.

Another reason is poverty. According to the US Census, New Mexico
ranks No. 1 for poverty (along with Louisiana and the District of
Columbia), and Rio Arriba is hardly the richest county in the state.

Finally, there's culture - or rather, the erosion of it. "Rio
Arribans have always been extremely attached to their culture," says
Ms. Reichelt. Rio Arriba has a rich Hispanic tradition, that dates
back more than 400 years. But many residents, including Reichelt,
feel it's disappearing.

She believes the community is suffering from a sense of collective
hopelessness. As a result, she says, many are using drugs to
"self-medicate" their grief.

An uphill battle

But county officials are determined to shed themselves of the dubious
distinction of being the county with the most deaths per capita, in
the state where the greatest number of drug-related deaths occur.
(There were 163 drug-related deaths in New Mexico last year.)

They face an uphill battle. While the US average for drug-related
deaths is 2.5 per 100,000 people, Rio Arriba County has 35 deaths per
100,000. The county's drug of choice is black-tar heroin, leading to
a higher rate of overdoses. What makes combating drug abuse here even
more complicated is that, in many cases, it's become a family affair
- - with entire families not only using, but burglarizing houses
together to support their habit.

Phillip Martinez, a former heroin addict, says drugs were an
intergenerational problem in his family. His grandfather was an
alcoholic, and his father was hooked on prescription drugs. Two of
his brothers died of drug overdoses.

"In all the traditions that we celebrated - birthdays, weddings,
funerals, matanzas - alcohol was involved," he says. But Mr. Martinez
is one of Rio Arriba's success stories. He credits the treatment
program Amistad, where he now works as a counselor, for helping him
stay drug-free for 18 months.

In addition to being a stop on a drug-smuggling route, Rio Arriba is
considered the heart of the centuries-old, northern-New-Mexico
Hispanic culture. Galleries with traditional weavings, religious
carvings, paintings, and other crafts stud the road from Espanola to
Chimayo. Residents proudly claim their home as the birthplace of the
lowrider.

Families commonly have lived in the same towns for many generations.
Among themselves, they frequently speak a mix of Spanish and English,
often in the same sentence - a phenomenon known as code-switching.
But that's fading, as the younger generations lose the Spanish
language.

"The dilemma is: Do they choose the culture they were born into or
the telecommunications culture? Do they choose MTV?" asks Harry
Montoya, director of a drug-prevention program called Hands Across
Culture.

But Mr. Montoya acknowledges that, even within the traditional
culture, heroin use has been prevalent among a minority of residents
since the 1930s. "Families are dealing because of poverty," says
counselor and recovered addict Betty Ross. "Some start selling it,
and didn't mean to start using it - it was to feed the kids."

While no one is downplaying the severity of the problem, some
residents resent being labeled a giant drug house. With a population
of 41,000, Rio Arriba County had 16 drug deaths in 2000 and 18 in
1999, according to the New Mexico Department of Health.

Murray Ryan, an Espanola physician who is outspoken on the issue, has
also worked in Seattle, where he says there were "horrendous pockets
of 10,000 people in housing projects where the drug situation was
much worse. But because it was a metropolitan area, the statistics
get spread out."

Residents take action

New Mexico, whose Gov. Gary Johnson has been a champion of treating
rather than punishing drug offenders, has taken several steps this
year that may help Rio Arriba. Some $9.8 million was allocated for a
more treatment-oriented drug policy, following the example of states
like Arizona and California.

And a law was passed that, for the first time in the US, gives
private physicians the right to administer Narcan, a drug used to
keep alive victims of heroin overdoses. In Rio Arriba, Narcan kits
have been created for families of addicts to keep on hand.

Residents have also taken matters into their own hands. In September
1999, there was a major federal raid in Chimayo, resulting from a
close coordination between a citizen committee and law enforcement.

Informing on dealers in this tightknit community of 3,000 is
difficult, especially with many interrelated families. However, the
citizen committee used that closeness to their advantage. "About 12
people had a network of sources, and some had really good ones," says
Bruce Richardson, committee president.

In one morning, 34 drug dealers were apprehended. Chimayo now has its
own police substation, and Police Chief Wayne Salazar says residents
are much more likely to report crime.

Mr. Richardson says there was a "big outpouring of emotion from
grandmothers and mothers. They put a big poster in the post office
saying things like 'Thank you to God.' "