MEXICAN ADDICTION RATES RISE AS U.S. BORDER SECURITY TIGHTENS

MEXICO CITY -- After years of dismissing cocaine as a U.S. problem,
Mexicans are finding that it's their problem, too.

Government drug treatment clinics that saw 3,000 abusers a year in the
1990s now see 50,000. Abuse used to be largely confined to the northern
Mexican states from which U.S. cocaine smuggling operations were launched.
Now it has seeped south to big cities such as Mexico City and Guadalajara.

There, powdered cocaine, with its high price limiting its use to Mexico's
upper classes, has given way to $2-a-rock crack so cheap that it's luring
street kids away from sniffing solvents.

Security Made Problem Worse

The problem has deep roots, but the security crackdown on the U.S.-Mexican
border since Sept. 11 intensified it, Mexican drug officials say. They say
smugglers are finding it harder to move cocaine into the United States and
instead are selling it in Mexico - at rock-bottom prices. As evidence, they
cite the high purity of cocaine recently seized, suggesting that smugglers
are selling the drug before squeezing out the extra profit derived from
cutting it.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson corroborates the
theory that tighter border enforcement is responsible. Cocaine purity fell
9 percent last year in the United States, reflecting tight supply,
Hutchinson told Knight Ridder. U.S. coke dealers are "diluting it to make
it go further," he said.

In Mexico City's outskirts, at a group therapy session for parents of drug
addicts, Pedro Bernal Garcia rues the consequences.

"We are just so sad because we don't want to accept that our kids have
fallen into drugs," said Garcia, whose two sons, aged 27 and 24, are
imprisoned for stealing to feed their cocaine habits.

As other parents nod in unison, he adds something many U.S. families
already know: "This is a global problem."

Mexico now has at least 2.5 million drug users, and at least half a million
of them are hard-core drug addicts, said Guido Belsasso, Mexico's
anti-addictions czar. Mexico's population is about 100 million.

According to Health Ministry studies, more than 5 percent of Mexicans aged
12 to 65 have tried illicit drugs. That's nothing like the 39 percent rate
for Americans reported by U.S. drug abuse agencies. But it's a troubling
number for a conservative country more accustomed to alcoholism than drug
abuse.

New Smuggling Routes

Historically, traffickers brought Colombian cocaine to the United States
via the Florida and Gulf coasts. More effective interdiction in those areas
during the 1990s compelled Colombian traffickers to seek other routes.

Along the way, Colombians began paying with cocaine instead of money. What
Mexican cartels couldn't get across the border they began selling in Mexico.

"If you have a 1 kilogram (2.2 pound) block of cocaine, you can't go to the
bank and cash it out. That's how kids 7, 8 and 9 are getting hooked,"
Belsasso said. "That is the new scene in Mexico City."