DRUGS-CUBA: Alarm Sounded on a Problem Normally Kept Mum

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, May 8 2002 (IPS) - Little is said in Cuba about the trade and consumption of illicit drugs and any information arising about the situation on the island tends to lack official confirmation. But in a few exceptional cases the government-run communications media sound an alarm.

“I am addicted to marijuana… I have even tried crack, and I use cocaine occasionally.” This testimony appeared in the latest edition of the Cuban magazine Bohemia and is noteworthy because such coverage the issue is so rare.

The words were spoken by a 28-year-old who gave his name as Juan Angel. He says he began using psychiatric pharmaceuticals at age 18, mixing them with alcoholic drinks.

“They have caused me a great deal of harm. Many times I have thought about how happy I would be to escape them and all other kinds of mind-altering chemicals,” he said.

According to the mother of another young man who, like Juan Angel, is undergoing treatment at a Havana hospital for drug addiction, it is essential to “broaden the alert, because if we don’t talk about it, the causes and related problems continue to be ignored. People should not look at it as something that will never affect them.”

In the early 1990s, rumours began to circulate about drug consumption and about the police closing down certain Havana nightclubs due to the drug use and trade occurring at those locations. But the rumours always lack official confirmation on this socialist island and, as a result, are only rarely mentioned by the state-run media.

Teachers consulted by IPS said the government has provided them with almost no information about the use and abuse of illicit drugs and legal psycho-pharmaceuticals, their consequences, the motivations for consumption, characteristics of a drug user or how to handle the case of a student who uses drugs.

“In my school we have never had that sort of problem, but we can’t think that we live in a bubble, exempt from a phenomenon that is unfortunately so common in today’s world. I think more should be published about it,” commented one secondary-school teacher.

According to the Cuban authorities, drug consumption is an “incipient” phenomenon – a description the island’s Roman Catholic Church agrees with – and is concentrated in Havana, a city of 2.2 million people.

The scant data available suggests the same thing. According to Justice Minister Roberto Díaz Sotolongo, 66 young people, most of whom were students at pre-university or technology institutions in the capital, were registered by the authorities as drug users in 2000.

The minister also said that 280 people were treated at health centres for problems related to drug use. “It is a low-scale phenomenon that we have localised and brought under control,” Díaz Sotolongo said.

Education officials insist that students are becoming addicts, because most often it is a matter of individuals using some type of drug only occasionally.

“There were very few cases of drug use reported in the last three years,” Pascual Betancourt, the national government official in charge of school inspections, told Bohemia.

Most of the students recorded as drug consumers had ingested plant-based infusions with hallucinogenic effects, in other words, substances that are not included on international lists of illegal narcotics, said Betancourt.

“Our approach to treatment is eminently pedagogical. The youths are kept within the educational system and they and their families receive appropriate counselling and health services,” the official said.

According to María Esther Ortiz, director of the governmental Group of Drug Experts, many of the young narcotics users do not work or study, and their families tend to have good incomes, whether legally or illegally earned.

Drug users “might live in areas where there some drug is available, their families generally lack well-established social norms, and the neighbourhood could have a certain permissiveness with regard to the activities of the dealers,” said Ortiz, a psychotherapist at the Havana Psychiatric Hospital.

The reasons the youths themselves give for using drugs range from curiosity and the recommendations made by their friends, to the belief that the drug will improve academic performance and their relationships with family and friends.

“This could happen to anyone with self-esteem problems and who does not have any clear goals in life,” said Ortiz.

In a rare acknowledgement of the issue, the government launched a prevention programme that provided training last year to 100,000 workers in the health and education sectors about drug use and addiction.

The main objective of the programme is to create recreational, cultural and communication spaces within communities in order to foment the healthy psychological and social development of children and adolescents, and to promote activities that discourage drug use.

Some local experts assert that drug addiction was eradicated in Cuba in the mid-1970s, though there are no figures available on the magnitude of the problem prior to that era.

But other specialists are less emphatic about the elimination of the problem, acknowledging that drug consumption continues in Cuba, although it is mostly limited to marijuana and the abuse of psychiatric medications.

The drug phenomenon apparently resurfaced in the 1990s when Cuba opened its doors to international tourism and allowed the free circulation of dollars, which improved the purchasing power of some sectors of the island’s population.

Cuba is neither a drug producer or drug importer, but its geographic location puts it between the narcotics exporters of South America and the main consumer markets: the United States and Europe.

The specialised forces that guard the Cuban coast, islets and keys report that they are able to prevent most illegal transit of drugs through Cuba’s national waters, though they admit that “a package here and there” gets by the barriers and reaches the domestic market.

These packages originate in drug shipments known in Spanish as “recalos”, left by traffickers in isolated areas of the Cuban islands for their associates to pick up and transport northwards. Or drug traffickers may dump the packages into the sea if they believe their boats or aircraft that have been spotted by the coast guard.

The Cuban authorities seized nearly 12,000 tons of drugs in 2000, according to the latest official report. The document, however, does not report the quantities of the different substances, nor what portion was detected in Cuban seaports and airports.

The Cuban government denies that cocaine production exists on the island, though does recognise that there are small plantations of marijuana with 100 to 200 plants each, which together with the “recalos” of cocaine are the main source of drugs for the domestic market.

Prices range from slightly less than a dollar for a marijuana cigarette to 70 dollars for a dose of cocaine and from five to 10 dollars for a hit of “cambolo”, the Cuban version of crack, made by mixing cocaine and bicarbonate of soda.

“The dealers are crooked. To approach them there is a set of passwords, a language. You begin going to them with someone who introduces you, then you become a regular client,” said Juan Angel, the drug user interviewed by Bohemia.

Cuban law establishes severe punishment for drug dealers, including the death penalty. For consumers, meanwhile, there are numerous health services, including hospitalisation for detoxification and outpatient treatment.

Minister Díaz Sotolongo stated that in 2000 several dozen Cubans and 170 to 180 foreigners – nearly half from Colombia – were imprisoned in Cuba on drug charges.

“There is a response for each situation (in the drug trade). If the person is a vendor, he must be tried and punished to the extent of the law. If the person is a consumer, he should receive appropriate health treatment,” said the Justice minister.