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S. America Confronts Surge In Crack Use

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By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO, The New York Times

Published: February 23, 2008

CIUDAD OCULTA, Argentina - Bilma Acuna has two drug-addicted sons and roams the streets of this slum 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 form of crack cocaine that has destroyed thousands of lives in Argentina and has created a cycle of drug-induced street violence never seen before in the 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 total consumer of cocaine in the world, after the United States, the State Department says.

Paco Addiction Spreads Quickly

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 grounds for cheaper, lower-quality cocaine.

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

Just weeks after first trying the drug, Acuna'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 Acuna, 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."

Loose Borders Aid Traffickers
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 both countries 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, police say.

The surge in lower-quality cocaine hitting the streets has resulted from a crackdown by both governments on the chemicals needed to transform cocaine paste, or pasta base as it is called, into its higher-value powder form.

In Argentina, the deep financial crisis of late 2001 turned places such as 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 Sao 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 crack for a 15-minute high.

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