Drug use spreads among Colombian youth
By John Lyons

BOGOTA (Reuter) They called him Irwin ``Pepas'' slang here for the pills
he sold to fellow students at his private high school in Colombia's capital.

But, unlike Colombia's notorious drug cartels that specialize in murder,
kidnappings and other violence, Irwin obtained his supplies by sending his
housekeeper across town to purchase boxes of pills for him at an unscrupulous
pharmacy. His young customers paid him with their monthly spending
allowances.

``Their pockets were always full of money,'' the slender 15yearold told
Reuters at a drug rehabilitation center on the outskirts of Bogota where he
is receiving treatment for his own drug habit.

Irwin vows he will beat his drug problem. But Colombian officials and social
workers fear that the growing incidence of drug use among teenagers like him
could be the beginnings of an Americanstyle drug epidemic.

``Drugs are becoming fashionable in the high schools,'' said Bogota secretary
of education program director Maria Gertrudis Tibocha, who coordinates drug
prevention for the city's nearly 4,000 public and private schools. ``We are
worried that the producing country will become the consuming country.''

HOME TO THE DRUG TRADE

Colombia produces an estimated 80 percent of the world's supply of cocaine
and has become the main supplier of highgrade heroin to the U.S. market,
according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration figures. But local drug
use has long remained extremely low an estimated 1.6 percent of the
population used narcotics last year.

In the last four years, however, domestic cocaine use has increased by a
third and marijuana consumption has almost doubled, according to a March
study by the Fundacion Santa Fe de Bogota, a private health foundation. And
about 75 percent of the Colombians who tried illegal drugs for the first time
last year were students between the ages of 12 and 17, the study reported.

``Drugs are being used in all levels of society,'' Dr. Camilo Uribe, director
of the toxicology unit for Bogota's Secretary of Health, said.

He said drug overdoses are now the sixth leading cause of poisoning
emergencies at Bogota's state run hospitals. The private clinic he runs on
the expensive north side of Bogota sees as many as three cocaine overdoses
per week, whereas 10 years ago such cases were rare.

DRUG USE UP AMONG YOUNG

Drug use among Colombia's youth has increased despite a 1994 law requiring
drug education and prevention programs in the country's high schools. The
budget for schoolrelated drug prevention programs in Bogota has increased
from about $25,000 a decade ago to $500,000 today. The proposed budget for
fiscal 1998 is $800,000, Tibocha said.

But experts say the ready availability of cheap narcotics makes drugs
tempting for young Colombians. The street price of a gram of cocaine hovers
between $3 and $5. ``Bazuco,'' a potent byproduct of the cocaine
manufacturing process, costs even less.

Irwin was 13 years old when he took his first drag on a marijuana cigarette,
he said. Within a year he had developed a taste for cocaine and psychedelic
mushrooms.

``Colombia is already the most violent nation in the world,'' city
toxicologist Uribe said. ``I ask myself what will happen if we let (the drug
problem) take off?''