Mexico confronts its own drug demand

Houston Chronicle:

Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday launched a new phase of his anti-narcotics crusade that will include the drug testing of students in more than 8,000 schools nationwide.

Calderon's initiative is seen as recognition of a growing problem among Mexican adolescents. Many Mexicans, including police and other officials, have long seen drug trafficking as an American problem, limiting the public's support for combating the problem.

"Society is demanding a coordinated response from the authorities to confront this social cancer," Calderon said at a junior high school in Monterrey, the industrial hub 150 miles south of Laredo, Texas, that has been battered by gangland violence this year.

"As a father I understand the worry of Mexicans who fear that their children are victims of crime on the way to school, in the parks, in the streets," said Calderon, who has three young children. "I know the anguish and pain of mothers who realize, sometimes too late, that their children have fallen into the claws of drugs."

In addition to calling for drug testing, Calderon said local, state and federal governments will build more parks and sports complexes and push for public involvement in them, with an initial $7 million investment in Monterrey. And he said more than 300 clinics would be opened across Mexico to treat drug and alcohol addictions.

The abuse of cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, heroin and other narcotics in Mexico has skyrocketed during the past decade, by some estimates increasing as much as 2,000 percent.

Authorities have become particularly concerned about crystal meth, which is cheap enough to be widely used even among Mexico's poor majority.

...

Crystal meth production largely moved to Mexico after states in the US crackdown on the over the counter sale of a key ingredient--Sudafed. That Mexico is starting to have its own problem on the demand side, should also not be a surprise. Drugs are a common escape hatch for the poor and Mexico has an abundance of that category unfortunately. It does give the government even more incentive to go after the dealers that have plagued both sides of the border.