DRUG ADDICTION EXPLODES IN MEXICO

MEXICO, CITY - -- In the past two years, a crack addiction has cost
Alejandra Gonzales a job, custody of two sons and nearly her sanity as
she drifted from rehabilitation center to rehabilitation center.

The 25-year-old former waitress is hardly alone.

While the Mexican military battles the nation's powerful drug cartels,
drug addiction is increasing at an alarming rate in the country.
According to a recent government study, the number of addicts has
nearly doubled from 158,000 to 307,000 in the past six years, a figure
many health experts say is much higher but hard to quantify due to
difficulties in polling states with heavy drug violence, such as
Chihuahua and Baja California.

"Once you start, it's hard to get out," said Ulises Cavazos, 57, a
graying farm laborer who has been hooked on methamphetamines for more
than 30 years. As he walked through a sunlit outdoor corridor of a
city-run rehabilitation center, Cavazos added: "It is very easy to
stay addicted to drugs here." Some blame U.S.

Some observers say the easy access to drugs in Mexico is due partly to
a joint U.S.-Mexico crackdown along the border that has diverted drugs
bound for the United States to the domestic market.

Others point to a lack of prevention programs and a recent report by a
Brookings Institution commission co-chaired by former Mexican
President Ernesto Zedillo, which faults the United States for
providing aid that focuses on law enforcement rather than drug prevention.

In December, Washington released $197 million - the first stage of a
$400 million aid package for Mexico - to purchase surveillance
aircraft, airport inspection equipment, and case-tracking software to
help police share intelligence.

But increasing domestic drug consumption has moved numerous
politicians and social activists to push for more drug education
programs and decriminalization for casual drug users who are filling
up jails and prisons. Critics also say there is no standard drug
education program for Mexican schools and that rehabilitation and
counseling centers lack funding.

Since taking office in 2006, President Felipe Calderon has deployed
some 20,000 troops in a bloody battle with competing cartels that
engage in decapitations, kidnappings and grisly shootouts.
Drug-related deaths surpassed 5,700 in 2008 - nearly twice the number
recorded in 2007. Choosing treatment

In October, however, Calderon proposed giving drug users caught with
small quantities of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and other
illicit drugs the option of jail or treatment to relieve overcrowded
prisons.

Cesar Cravioto, director of the Institute of Social Assistance and
Integration - a city-government-run rehabilitation center - hopes
Calderon's proposal will soon be approved. The bill is currently
languishing in Congress.

"I believe that the decriminalization of various drugs will
destabilize the drug trade," Cravioto said. "The difference is that
they would no longer be illicit, and young people would have more
information about the effects of drugs."

But Rosaura de la Torre, director of the Torres de Potrero Center of
Social Integration and Assistance, a free treatment center in Mexico
City, says the president should go further, making treatment mandatory.

"The problem is those convicted of drug possession do not seek
treatment after serving time," she said. "That exacerbates the
addiction rate." Legalization controversial

Calderon's proposal comes on the heels of former President Vicente
Fox's bill in 2006 that called for sweeping decriminalization for
possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. Even though Mexico's
Congress passed the measure, Fox vetoed his own bill after Washington
complained, some analysts say.

"One day he celebrates the bill on camera, and days later he says some
voices in Mexico and abroad convinced him to veto it," said Ricardo
Sala, founder of Vive Con Drogas, an activist group that advocates
decriminalization.

Sala says the two biggest enemies of drug reforms are Mexico's
Catholic Church and conservative politicians on both sides of the
border who believe decriminalization leads to higher addiction rates -
an argument long debated by many health professionals.
Decriminalization will contribute to a "sick population," Mexico City
Police Chief Manuel Mondragon has said.

Nevertheless, Mexico City's leftist government has introduced four
proposals to decriminalize marijuana in the past three years with
three still stuck in legislative committees.

For a population where surveys show 1 in 3 youths has tried drugs and
methamphetamine use has quadrupled in the last six years, the problem
centers on a lack of drug education, some experts say.

"Education is what we should concentrate on at this moment," said
Haydee Rosovsky, head of the Center for Educational and Community Responses.

She and others say a lack of knowledge about the long-term effects of
drugs is a prime reason why many poor youths opt for sniffing glue.
Its use is neither regulated nor punishable by law but can cause
irreversible damage to the brain, heart, kidney and liver.

Early education and psychological counseling may have helped addicts
like Gonzales.

"The problems that drove me to crack involved my family, my friends
and the way I felt about myself," said Gonzales while waiting to see a
therapist in a sterile consulting room of her latest rehabilitation
center. "So when I leave here to return to those things, of course it
will be difficult not to go back to drugs."

This article appeared on page A - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle