DRUGS-PERU: White Collar Drug Use on the Rise

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Zoraida Portilla

LIMA, May 6 1998 (IPS) - To the casual observer, Guido R. would be a typical Latin American business success story. At 33 years of age, the young executive with a transnational company wore expensive suits, drove a fancy car and lived in a luxury apartment.

His increasing common confrontation with other staff members were considered simply part of his aggressive and successful personality. But Guido’s mood swings were part of his addiction to cocaine – a growing problem in Latin American business circles. Drug traffickers even offer to deliver supplies directly to the consumers offices.

An estimated two percent of all drug addicts in Latin America are executives who consume cocaine chlorohydrate – and its use is on the rise. In Peru, an investigation carried out in 1993 by a nongovernmental organization that specializes in drug abuse, revealed that 4.1 percent of male white-collar workers were using cocaine as against 0.2 percent of women.

Four years later, the rate had increased to 6 percent in men and 2 percent in women.

The consumption of cocaine among executives is a problem for latin America that goes beyond the countries producing the drug – Peru, Colombia and Bolivia. Reports from Argentina, Chile and the United States reveal a rise in the use of cocaine among the wealthy.

In the United States, an estimated 10 percent of top executives have admitted taking cocaine at least once in their life. The statistics may seem exaggerated, but experts say that drugs are extremely attractive to people working at at a high stress level.

“I felt like my mind was clear, I had more interest in working, I thought more clearly” said Guido R. who currently is receiving treatment in a drug rehabilitation center.

“Just two grams of cocaine can have a tremendous effects,” agreed Milton Rojas, a physician at ther Center of Information and Education for the Prevention of Drug Abuse (CEDRO).

These tremendous effects, however, soon become an organic cerebral syndrome. The executive drug user “becomes aggressive and irrational, he becomes unapproachable, he doesn’t want to speak with anyone, he fights frequently and is verbally – even physically – aggressive with co-workers, Rojas explained.

This is what happened to Guido who occasionally lashed out at a subordinate who questioned his instructions. One afternoon, Guido sniffed a few grams of cocaine in his office and promptly suffered a heart attack, which revealed his addiction.

Cocaine increases arterial pressure and the frequency of the heartbeat, and it causes a reduction in the size of the coronary arteries. The result is that the heart receives less blood and oxygen, said cardiologist Carlos Tafur. One-third of all cocaine addicts who suffer coronary problems actually have healthy hearts, he added.

More than 100 heart attacks have felled cocaine users in the past 15 years in Peru, with the average age of victims being 31 – well below the average age of heart attack victims.

A recent TV documentary showed how easy it has become to obtain cocaine: an executive calls a confidential number and solicits the delivery of a drug or confirms a meeting time, and the delivery is made immediately.

Price is no problem. In Lima’s middle and upper class areas a gram costs just 10 dollars while delivery services to an office up the price to between 15 and 20 dollars – with a guarantee of high purity, according to users. An addict generally uses between two and five grams of cocaine a day.

What is more surprising is the impunity surrounding these services.

“It is very difficult to infiltrate these groups, they know with whom they are working and they are only interested in ‘Class A’ clients. They are very discriminating and are protected by their clients, who don’t like scandals,” said one drug specialist.