[NYTr] BBC "Drug Scourge Takes Hold in Argentina'

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Odd timing. Assume ther is some political motivation behind this
story, since street drug use statistics are notoriously unreiabel, as
even this article admits. When a "drug scourge" is described as needing
"urgent action," assume an interest in military intervention of some
sort.  If the forces of the War on Drugs have as much interest in
Argentina's "drug scourge" as they do in Colombia and Afghanistan, the
people of Argentina are in for it.
 
This lurid article is all about "paco" -- cheap and plentiful cocaine
paste favored by the poor. For the BBC, it's a bizarrely badly written
piece, almost illiterate. More "Reefer Madness" than BBC or UN. 

Take, for example, these gems:

 "Some, in a short time, need a hundred fixes a day, or more.

 "Since much of the drug is chemically based, it does
  severe damage to the brain and internal organs....

 "Paco is the rubbish fed to the often desperate and vulnerable poor."


And prose like this is the rubbish fed to the ignorant public of the
the developed northern hemisphere who are supposed to support military
nterventionin the name of "democracy," "anti-terrorism," or the "war on
drugs."

The whole thing reeks of propaganda.  -NY Transfer.] 


BBC - Aug 29, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6896056.stm


Drugs scourge takes hold in Argentina

By Daniel Schweimler
BBC News, Buenos Aires

Whichever figures you read, they're alarming.

The United Nations says the increase in the use of cocaine paste, or 
paco, in Argentina has risen by 200% in the past couple of years. Other 
agencies put the figure as high as 500%.

It is simply the case that the consumption of paco is rising so fast in 
the poor neighbourhoods around Buenos Aires that it is almost impossible 
to keep track.

What is clear, say the experts, is that urgent action needs to be taken 
now to prevent the situation spiralling out of control.

Mothers' anger

There is a pile of rubble in the middle of the squat, badly built houses 
in the Villa La Madrid shanty town from where drug dealers used to sell 
paco.

"We complained to the police, but they did nothing," said Isabel 
Vazquez, who belongs to a group called Mothers Against Paco.

"So one night a big group of us marched over here and tore the place 
down with our own hands. The dealers fled."

Isabel added that children as young as nine were buying paco.

Initially it is given to them free, then once they are hooked, it is 
sold cheaply, for just a few pennies a time.

Paco is a cheap drug made from the mostly chemical residue left over 
from the production of cocaine, which is exported to markets in Europe 
and the United States as well as being bought by wealthy Argentines.

Paco is the rubbish fed to the often desperate and vulnerable poor.

It is burnt on a piece of metal, a used beer can for example, and the 
fumes inhaled through a metal straw.

It gives the user a rapid, intense high, but wears off quickly leaving 
him needing another fix, and another.

Some, in a short time, need a hundred fixes a day, or more.

Since much of the drug is chemically based, it does severe damage to the 
brain and internal organs.

In their fight against the cocaine trade, the authorities in Latin 
America had made it more difficult for the legal chemicals used in 
making the drug to leave the countries where they were produced - mostly 
Brazil and Argentina.

So the dealers simply moved their factories from Peru, Bolivia and 
Colombia closer to where some of the raw materials used in the 
production of cocaine are made.

"They couldn't believe their luck," said Hugo Miguez, a clinical 
psychologist and one of the leading experts in Argentina on the rise in 
the use of paco.

"It was a very ill thought-out strategy."

He explains that in some areas, almost always socially deprived 
neighbourhoods, 50% of young men were using paco.

"They already belong to a neglected social group," he explained. "But 
their use of paco leads to them being doubly excluded, by their families 
and neighbours as well."

Getting a life back

The authorities in Buenos Aires province are responding.

Paco users, all young men, are treated at a number of rehabilitation 
centres.

New ones are opening all the time. One of the biggest is at Lomas de 
Zamorra, about half an hour south of Buenos Aires.

Alex is 20 years old and a former paco user.

He tried the drug under pressure from his friends and soon found himself 
hooked. He sold all he had, which was not much.

Then he began stealing from his family. Then he started stealing elsewhere.

By the time he was 20, he had served three terms in jail and was 
separated from his girlfriend and their baby daughter.

"I realised my life wasn't worth living like that," he said, standing 
outside the vegetable patch where he works at the rehabilitation centre.

"I didn't value my life, but now I do. I realise that I'm important."

He could not talk about any kind of future.

"All I can do is concentrate on the present," he said. "Trying to get my 
life back and my girlfriend and daughter back."

"We thought we'd lost him," said his sister, Xoana, who had come to 
visit him.

"But now we see him returning to his old self."

Alex is determined not to go back to his neighbourhood where paco is 
being sold openly since he fears his friends will tempt and taunt him 
back into using it again.

"I'm worried about the young kids doing what I did," he said. "They sell 
to kids of nine and 10."

Alex was just one of many young men at the rehabilitation centre with 
similar, dramatic stories to tell.

But they are the lucky ones, the ones not abandoned by their families 
and friends.

Most Argentines never set foot in the sprawling shanty towns around the 
main cities and are only now becoming aware of the growing paco problem 
- a problem that is threatening to become a crisis.


© BBC MMVII