ENDLESS WAR [Day 1b]

NOT ALL DRUGS ARE LEAVING THE COUNTRY

BOGOTA -- At Sigmund Freud Park on the National University campus, minds
are often altered on heroin.

In the dance clubs near the beaches of Cartagena, hips grind to a mix of
ballenato music and Ecstasy pills.

And inside the decrepit slums of Cartucho, in the heart of the capital,
children in tattered clothes puff on cigarettes laced with a cocaine
derivative called "basuco."

As Colombia struggles to end decades of battles against drug cartels and
insurgents, it is confronting a new war within its own borders. Drug
consumption is growing steadily, from modern apartment buildings to the
most remote jungle hamlets, and the government now admits that something
must be done about it.

It is a relatively new phenomenon that both infuriates and embarrasses the
country's leaders, who for years have blamed Colombia's drug problems on
the overwhelming demand that comes from the United States and Europe.

And while most of the cocaine and heroin grown and processed in this
country remains destined for export overseas, officials here can no longer
hide the growing demand at home.

"Drug consumption here is something we realize we have to address
immediately," said Gabriel Merchan, director of Colombia's national office
on drug policy. "It's another painful price that our society has to pay for
narcotrafficking, but if we commit ourselves now we can stop it from
growing further."

Colombia is not alone among Latin American countries to face a new
drug-consumption dilemma. Other countries that have become players in the
region's booming narcotrafficking industry -- whether as producers or
gateways into the United States -- have seen rising levels of drug abuse
among their own citizens, most notably Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican
Republic.

Although Merchan and other officials insist that the drug-abuse problem is
only a fraction of that found in the United States and Europe, Colombia's
war on drugs may prove to be trickier in a country where supplies are
cheaper and more addictive because of their purity.

A gram of 70-percent-pure heroin sells for as little as $10 at Freud Park.
Ecstasy pills, a synthetic drug popular in the United States since the
1980s, can be had for $3 each. And a half-gram of basuco powder, a
byproduct of cocaine processing that contains traces of gasoline, ether,
and sulfuric acid, can be bought for just 50 cents.

"It has a bitter taste that at first makes your stomach ache and gives you
diarrhea," said Jaime Carbajal, 33, a recovering basuco addict who now
works for a drug treatment center in Bogota. "But your body adjusts quickly
and it makes you feel calm, not strong, but not weak, either."

Current drug-consumption statistics for Colombia are hard to find. Most
officials rely on two government-funded studies -- one conducted in 1992,
the other in 1996 -- to gauge the trends.

Nearly 2 percent of Colombia's 35 million citizens said they took some
illegal drug the previous year, according to the 1996 report, nearly double
the rate in the first survey. Among respondents, marijuana had been
consumed the most, followed by cocaine, basuco, and heroin.

A 1999 government survey of children and young adults, released two weeks
ago and using a different methodology, found that 5 percent of Colombian
men and women between the ages of 10 and 24 are regular consumers. In the
United States, that number is roughly 3 percent.

"This is the sad consequence of a country with a large narcotrafficking
industry," said Klaus Nyholm, director of the United Nations Drug Control
Program office in Colombia, which sponsors nearly two dozen drug-fighting
programs.

Surprisingly, Colombia's heaviest drug consumption is not in Bogota, a
metropolis of 7 million people, or in the remote fields that process
cocaine and heroin, but in the rolling hills that produce the country's
other famous product: coffee.

Along a miles-wide corridor on the western slopes of the Andes Mountains,
cadres of field workers -- mostly men who spend months at a time moving
from farm to farm -- smoke large quantities of marijuana. The demand for
the plant in the region has created thriving drug markets in Pereira,
Manizales, Armenia, and other towns along the coffee belt.

Complicating Colombia's drug-use problem is its worsening economy. Once
considered a model among Latin American countries for its steady prosperity
and thriving middle class despite years of civil war, Colombia is now in
the midst of one of its worst recessions in 70 years. A growing number of
businesses and investors have taken their money out of the country mostly
because of the escalating violence involving government troops, leftist
guerrillas, and right-wing paramilitary groups.

"It's such a complicated situation that it's hard to know where to start,"
said one drug-treatment worker in Bogota who requested anonymity. "Do you
stop the drug traffickers first, or the civil war, or create more jobs for
people? There's only so much money that government can spend and people are
losing patience."