PBH / Off Topic: do your thing / Forums (active)

Cheap Cocaine Floods Argentina, Devouring Lives

BUENOS AIRES — Bilma Acuña has two drug-addicted sons and roams the streets of the Ciudad Oculta slum here with a purpose: to save others from the same fate. She and the group of mothers she helps organize have become the only bulwark, it seems, against the irrepressible spread of paco, a highly addictive, smokable cocaine residue that has destroyed thousands of lives in Argentina and caused a cycle of drug-induced street violence never seen before in this country.

The scourge underscores a significant shift in both Argentina and its larger neighbor, Brazil, which in just a few years have become sizable cocaine consumers. Brazil now ranks as the second largest consumer of cocaine in the world after the United States, the State Department says.

The surge in drug use has been fueled by porous borders, economic hardship and, more recently, the rolling back of restrictions on coca growing since President Evo Morales took office in 2006 in neighboring Bolivia. The result has been the democratization of cocaine in this part of South America, which has become the dumping ground for cheaper, lower-quality cocaine.

In the five years since residents first began noticing the crude yellowish crystals being smoked on the streets of Ciudad Oculta, a neighborhood of 15,000 people within Buenos Aires, paco has become the dominant drug that dealers are peddling.

Just weeks after first trying the drug, Mrs. Acuña’s son Pablo Eche began selling everything he owned to feed his addiction. He committed violent robberies. In a drug-fueled rage he destroyed his house and then sold the land that was left, ending up freezing and alone on the streets until his grandmother took him in.

“The majority of the kids are using here,�? said Mrs. Acuña, 46. “My son saw what was happening with the kids in the streets that were using paco, and he always said he wouldn’t get caught up in that. But he did.�?

The challenges to stopping the flow are immense. Fewer than 200 federal police officers patrol Brazil’s 2,100-mile border with Bolivia, though the Brazilian government says reinforcements are on the way. Only 10 percent of Argentina’s airspace is covered by radar, leaving traffickers free rein.

Cocaine seizures and major drug raids in Argentina and Brazil have surged in the past two years. The influx of raw cocaine paste used to make crack, from both Bolivia and Peru, has been particularly acute. In Brazil, such seizures by the federal police nearly quadrupled from 2006 to 2007, to 2,700 pounds from about 710 pounds, according to the police.

In Argentina, the deep financial crisis of late 2001 turned places like Ciudad Oculta into what are known here as villas miserias, or towns of misery, easily exploitable markets of impoverished people looking for escape.

“Cocaine is no longer the drug only of the elite, of high society,�? said Luiz Carlos Magno, a Brazilian narcotics officer in the São Paulo State Police Department. “Today kids buy three lines of cocaine for 10 reals,�? or about $6. For about $1 in Brazil and about $1.50 in Argentina, users can buy enough of the cocaine for a 15-minute high.

Paco is highly addictive because its high lasts just a few minutes — and is so intense that many users smoke 20 to 50 paco cigarettes a day to try to make its effects linger. Paco is even more toxic than crack cocaine because it is made mostly of solvents and chemicals like kerosene, with just a dab of cocaine, Argentine and Brazilian drug enforcement officials said. The surge in lower-quality cocaine hitting the streets has resulted from a crackdown by both countries on the chemicals needed to transform cocaine paste, or pasta base, as it is called, into powder form.

Tougher customs rules to track the flow of the chemicals, manufactured in large quantities in both countries, have limited access for Bolivian traffickers seeking to refine the base cocaine into higher-value powder, said Gen. Roberto Uchõa, Brazil’s national drug secretary.

As the quality of Bolivian cocaine has fallen off, the European market, in particular, has rejected it, the general said. So more of it has gone to Argentina and Brazil. In São Paulo, the police say the cocaine on the streets is less than 30 percent pure. “Every year they are producing more, and that is driving down prices,�? said Mr. Magno, with the state police.

Traffickers are cutting the cocaine powder with everything from boric acid to lidocaine to baking powder, leading to severe health effects like infections and blood clots, health officials said. “It is the garbage cocaine that is coming here,�? Mrs. Acuña said. “The kids here are smoking garbage.�?

Mrs. Acuña, a soft-spoken Paraguayan native, is battling paco’s spread to save the barrio, but also to save her family. Tragedy first struck in August 2001 when two drug dealers shot and killed her 16-year-old son, David, one week after he was believed to have witnessed a murder. The dealers are now in prison for his death.

A few years later Pablo Eche, her eldest son, and her younger son, Leandro, 20, became addicted to paco. That was when she helped form a Mothers of Paco support group.

With less than three dozen members in Ciudad Oculta, the mothers have few ways to counter the armed dealers who hold sway over the neighborhood. Instead, they find safety in numbers.

On one recent afternoon, Mrs. Acuña led a walk through the Oculta with some eight women. As she walked along the mostly unpaved streets, Bolivian and Paraguayan music blaring from open windows, she pointed out kiosks and red brick homes where dealers were known to sell. A teenager strode by at one point, a pistol stuffed in the front of his shorts.

A tiny police station the size of a one-car garage sat in a makeshift plaza. A police car was parked outside. “The police haven’t entered here much since 2001,�? Mrs. Acuña explained.

Argentine government officials have increased money in recent years for drug education, prevention and rehabilitation, but they have yet to announce any major plans to tackle the paco problem, which has left local law enforcement officials overwhelmed.

Instead, led by the mothers, residents are largely taking matters into their own hands. Mrs. Acuña fields dozens of calls a week from mothers seeking help with their children’s addictions. She refers some to government-run psychiatric clinics, and urges others, some of them recovering from addictions themselves, to join the group.

Mrs. Acuña operates a small diner with a bare concrete floor where the mothers hold many of their meetings. At one meeting on Jan. 28, Liliana Barrionuevo blurted out that not enough was being done to crack down on the dealers. Some mothers cast their eyes around nervously, fearful of reprisals.

“Before there were codes,�? another mother, Andrea Cordero, chimed in angrily. “The dealers would never sell to young kids, and the users would never use in public. Now there are no codes. We need to stand up and stick it to two or three dealers.�?

The descent of Mrs. Acuña’s son Pablo Eche parallels that of his neighborhood. His addiction began in 2003, when he was 21. His girlfriend at the time, six months pregnant with their son, left him and moved to Italy. Argentina’s economic crisis was still ravaging the country, and Ciudad Oculta was gripped by hopelessness.

Every day seemed to be worse. “The lack of money isn’t the nightmare,�? Mr. Eche said of the economic crisis. “It’s the pressure that it causes in a person, the desperation and the depression.�? He said he “was looking for a way to not feel anything, to not feel sadness, to find a way not to cry.�?

For months he had passed the kiosk on a corner near his house where he knew dealers were selling a new drug, one, it was whispered, that could cheaply fill that hollow place inside. “I always passed it, but never bought anything,�? he said.

Then one day he did.

From the first 15 minutes, paco seized his soul. Soon, he could no longer hold a job, even at his mother’s diner. And he could never have enough. At one point he went on a three-day paco bender without a wink of sleep, he said.

Three months after smoking his first pipe, he sold anything he could to turn into cash for paco. Finally, in a drug-induced hysteria, he destroyed the one-bedroom house his mother had given him, tearing down the roof and walls and ripping out the flooring. Eight months into his addiction, he sold what was left for about $315, one-quarter what his mother had paid.

His relationship with his mother was in shambles. He had stolen from her, and stolen from other family members as well. “I had turned into a nobody to her,�? he said. “I caused her a lot of pain.�?

He was homeless, starving and suffering from severe drug-induced chills when his grandmother finally took him in. His mother later came around.

These days, his eyes are clear, his voice steady. Interned at a drug-dependency clinic some 40 minutes from Ciudad Oculta — his fourth rehabilitation stint — he said he had been clean of drugs since October.

Now 25, he is again writing poetry, something he had not done since before he discovered paco. “The future is uncertain,�? he said. “But I am getting back my dreams.�?

But he worries about his brother Leandro, who is still prone to all-night paco benders. “I hope he finds a way to stop,�? he said. And he mourns for Ciudad Oculta. “Right now I can see all the little kids lining up to buy,�? he said, closing his eyes deeply. “Paco is a plague. Somehow we need to protect them from this

By El Polo on Feb 23, 2008, 14:11 in Off Topic.

El Polo says on Feb 23, 2008, 14:12:

Kinda long...

0 funny, 0 helpful.

CatGirl says on Feb 23, 2008, 14:55:

El Polo: Thanks for the post...Kind of sad too ;(

Love and Time: the only two things that cannot be bought, but only spent

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Portena says on Feb 23, 2008, 16:52:

Brave moms in Argentina.

Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks ~ Mark Twain

0 funny, 0 helpful.

slguy says on Feb 24, 2008, 20:06:

paco = crack, I assume?

Before you throw me out, make sure I pay my bar tab

0 funny, 0 helpful.

El Polo says on Feb 25, 2008, 06:06:

Maybe a stronger & cheaper form of crack.. it's about 35cents USD and people are robbing, to consume the drug...

(aljazeera english reports.)

0 funny, 0 helpful.

msaucey says on Feb 25, 2008, 09:42:

That's just horrible... yet, another cheap drug that does nothing but damage....

The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. - CS Lewis

0 funny, 0 helpful.

dwmte7 says on Feb 25, 2008, 17:00:

after living in colombia--medallo--for years, and having businesses in los angeles and hanging out in the 'white triangle'...aspen, sante fe, and los angeles, for years, i certainly did my share of the white party favor. it wasn't until i came back to florida to take care of my parents that i first tried what they call crack. i'm not sure what it is or how it's made, although i'm told it's coke, cooked down (???). well, addictive/habituative it is, but coke? i'm really not sure? and i can see--after a first hand experience--how it changes and can destroy lives, families and communities. sooooo, my question is like sl guy's is it a form of crack?

patriarch

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Lucas Freley says on Feb 25, 2008, 18:55:

El Paco es una pasta base. No llega a ser una droga, sino residuos. Ciudad Oculta...es una villa, en donde viven delincuentes, y muchos ilegales de Bolivia, Peru y Paraguay. Pero sobretodo de Bolivia y Peru. De ahi llega la droga. Está en los suburbios de Buenos Aires, a unos 15 kilómetros. Bueno como cualquier suburbio de cualquier ciudad capital del mundo, allí conviven todo tipo de gente.

Polo gracias por preocuparte por la salud de esos pobres chicos. Contame, ¿como hacen en Estados Unidos para combatir la droga en los colegios secundarios, o en los barrios pobres como el Bronx o Harlem? Tal vez nos sirva como lección y podamos aplicarlo acá. ;)

Hoy que estás esplendida y que todo lo iluminas, demos un paseo, vuelta por el Universo (Gustavo Cerati)

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Colombiche says on Feb 25, 2008, 19:49:

Me parece sumamente triste que estos chicos esten destruyendo sus vidas con el veneno de la droga, bien sea que esten en Buenos Aires, Harlem, Bronx, Envigado, Ciudad Bolivar .... etc etc. Donde se encuentren fisicamente es lo de menos.

El consumo de droga es una epidemia mundial preocupante. El problema es que no veo la solucion. Podriamos erradicar todos los cultivos de coca en Colombia, Peru y Bolivia y no cambiaria nada. La gente que busca escaparse de la realidad siempre va a buscar la manera de hacerlo, bien sea con paco, perico, aspirina o con pegante. Ademas, cada vez las drogas son menos puras y contienen mas ingredientes sinteticos, son mas baratas y mas accesibles para el consumo masivo.

El problema con el consumo de droga es que es un extasis temporaneo y luego llega el bajon que es una pesadilla. Para escaparse del bajon se consume mas droga... y asi se va creando el ciclo de adiccion. Desafortunadamente el uso de la droga es una consecuencia de la naturaleza debil del ser humano y solo dejara de existir el dia que cada individuo aprenda a trabajar arduamente para llenar sus carencias internas envez de estar buscando consuelo en la anestesia espiritual. Hasta ese dia, siempre habra un consumidor y por ende un vendedor de lo que sea.....

No me den trago extranjero, que es caro y no sabe a bueno.... (Rafael Godoy)

0 funny, 0 helpful.

msaucey says on Feb 25, 2008, 21:30:

Muy bien dicho Colombiche..... Es la verdad, los que buscan la droga siempre encuentran un modo o otro como conseguir y hacen todo lo que puedan por el proximo momento.... Muy triste...

The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. - CS Lewis

0 funny, 0 helpful.

eywed says on Feb 25, 2008, 22:52:

Having faught the drug wars in South Florida in the late 80s and early 90s I Love those who call to make drugs legal. After seeing the damage that crack did to so many it always amazed me how people looked down on the Police Officers and not the drug dealers.

Ay Hombe!!!!!

0 funny, 0 helpful.

El Polo says on Feb 26, 2008, 10:50:

Lucas, estamos de acuerdo, esto es un problema preocupante que se tiene que solucionar, pero pienso yo que la primera etapa tiene que ser a educar la gente y estos muchachos. Hay algunos que apena tienen 12 años de edad y estan involucrado en eso.

0 funny, 0 helpful.

msaucey says on Feb 26, 2008, 11:28:

Lo que no entiendo es porque no estan haciendo otras cosas a los 12.... By the time school was finished, and I was done with softball practice and homework, I was too tired to do anything else but sleep...

What's the saying about busy hands?...

The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. - CS Lewis

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Lucas Freley says on Feb 26, 2008, 11:38:

Si, lo mas triste es eso Polo: Son chicos. Y como decis, sin educacion. Y crecen en un mundo precario y violento. Lo peor es que esos chicos delinquen o se prostituyen para seguir consumiendo el Paco, que les revienta la cabeza, ya que es la pasta base en estado puro. Y esto tambien pasa en Amsterdam, en la Av. Market de San Francisco, en las afueras de Londres o Paris, etc. etc. Pero mientras los gobernantes (Cristina, Bush, Sarkozy, Huguito o el que sea) no tomen las riendas en este asunto, todo va a seguir igual. Bueno vos sabes bien que este negocio de la droga mueve muchos millones de dolares. Y yo no creo que algun dia pueda acabarse con este flagelo que es la droga.

Melisa, coincido en lo que decis. Solo que hago una distinción: el adulto que quiere arruinarse su vida consumiendo acido, cristales, zumbidos o lo que mierda fuera, ok problema de él. A mi modo de ver son enfermos, pero bueno sinceramente me tiene sin cuidado que un adulto acabe con su vida de esa manera. Lo malo es cuando se meten con los chicos y los inducen a meterse en ese mundo oscuro del cual no hay retorno. Eso si que no tiene perdón.

Hoy que estás esplendida y que todo lo iluminas, demos un paseo, vuelta por el Universo (Gustavo Cerati)

0 funny, 0 helpful.

dwmte7 says on Feb 28, 2008, 16:46:

eiwed...i was a policeman in the ice age of my life. didn't continue as it was, as a friend noted, too political. went back to university and hung there for what seemed forever.

well, as for so called controlled substances. i'm of the mind set that 'GOD didn't make no trash' and the reason that indigenous folks tend not to have problems with so called 'drugs' is because, 1) they[re told/shown the truth by their elders, and 2) given a natural education in pharmacopia by those self same elders, thus keeping them safe from foolish, over indulgence.

nowdays, it seems that parents bullshit their young and don't tell them the truth of their own learning experiences thus depriving them of armaments that could probably serve to protect them.

having worked all over the world and let a wholly professional life and at the same time not denying myself the enjoyment of 'party favors'. i'm of the school that teaches, '.....you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.'

back in the 80's, in medallo, it was a joke amongst the capos, referring to nancy reagan's slogan, "just say no"....one capo said to another, how do you just say "no" to a couple of billion dollars?

patriarch

0 funny, 0 helpful.