FOX SAYS MEXICO HAS IGNORED RISING DRUG-USE RATES TOO LONG

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico, long focused on the war against top drug lords
and cartels that smuggle narcotics to the United States, must do more to
curb its own fast-rising drug-use and addiction rates, President Vicente
Fox said Saturday.

Two days before he is scheduled to unveil his government's aggressive,
five-year anti-drug strategy, Fox said the new plan will push for improved
drug treatment and prevention programs nationwide and work to impose
tougher punishments for those caught selling drugs on Mexico's streets.

"In the past they talked about drug production and smuggling to the large
market in the United States," Fox said in his weekly radio address. "But
now the problem is hitting much closer to home because it affects our
children, our young people."

For decades dubbed a "transit" country that drugs flowed through on their
way to an insatiable market on America's streets, law enforcement officials
on both sides of the border now agree Mexico is beginning to look more like
a drug "consumer" nation.

The number of Mexicans addicted to hard drugs has skyrocket over the past
decade and addicts have begun congregating in border towns where drugs are
easily available and law enforcement often looks the other way.

Mexican drug use is still well below U.S. levels, but Fox acknowledged that
it is rising fast. He said Mexico's past emphasis on busting up major
smuggling gangs that move drugs across the border has forced smugglers to
cultivate a Mexican market for their products.

"We were so busy focusing on that task that we failed to take care of the
health of our own young people," he said. "That can't happen."

Fox's administration has been responsible for the arrest of several
high-profile kingpins this year, including Benjamin Arellano Felix, the
alleged leader of the Arellano Felix smuggling gang.

Fox, who appeared on the radio with Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la
Concha and his administration's top drug-addiction adviser, took a call
from Hugo Ernesto Garcia, a 20-year-old who said drug dealers now hang out
on every street corner in his working-class neighborhood in northwest
Mexico City.

"They deliver (drugs) to your house like pizza," Garcia told the president,
adding that the police often protect drug pushers in exchange for small bribes.

Another 20-year-old caller said Mexico's drug problem "was now such a
normal part of life" that there was very little Fox's government could do
about it.

Fox responded by calling on Mexican families to make sure their children
weren't using or selling drugs.

"This is a job that clearly the government should do, wants to do and is
going to do," he said. "But in no way is the government capable of winning
this battle without the cooperation of young people themselves and their
families.