Mexico drug gangs using more children as "mules"

In this March 6, 2012 photo, people at the CIRAD drug rehabilitation center attend a group meeting in Tijuana, Mexico. / AP Photo/Alejandro Cossio

(AP) TIJUANA, Mexico - Luis Alberto is only 14 but has the wizened gaze of a grown-up hardened by life. He never met his father, worked as a child, was hired by a gang to sell drugs and then got addicted to them.

In October he checked into Cirad, a rehab center west of this border city that handles about 500 drug addicts at a time, a fifth of them younger than 17.

"They brought me here because I was using and selling 'criloco,"' Luis Alberto said, referring to methamphetamine, the drug of choice for 90 percent of adolescents in detox because of its low cost and easy availability.

Luis Alberto is just one of an increasing number of young people being used as "mules" to ferry drugs across the border into the U.S. or sell them in nearby Mexican towns, said Victor Clark, an anthropologist who studies drug trafficking.

"Minors are cheap labor and expendable for organized crime in an area where there are few job opportunities or places for recreation, and where the distribution and consumption of drugs have grown fast," Clark said.

Mexican authorities say they are aware of the problem, but there are no official figures on the number of adolescents detained for selling or distributing drugs because the law forbids keeping criminal records for minors.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says that between 2008 and 2011, the number of youths aged 14 to 18 caught trying to cross the border between Tijuana and San Diego to sell drugs has grown tenfold. Lauren Mack, spokeswoman for ICE in San Diego, said 19 minors were arrested in 2008, 165 in 2009, 190 in 2010 and 190 again last year.

Most of them were high school students who carried drugs, usually methamphetamine or cocaine, hidden in their bodies or in their cars, Mack said.

Clark said similar things are being seen all along the border, at Mexican cities like Nogales, Ciudad Juarez and Reynosa. "It's growing at a worrying pace," he said.

Officials at drug rehab centers across Tijuana estimate that of the approximately 500 adolescents now undergoing treatment, about a tenth of them are like Luis Alberto, not only addicted to a drug but also used by cartels to sell it.

Luis Alberto, whose last name cannot be published because he is a minor, said he started selling drugs about two years ago in a neighborhood of east Tijuana along with other minors who were hired by "a boss." He made about 200 pesos ($16) a day, which he says he spent on food and drugs.

"Between me and my friends we sold about 40 packets a day. My boss kept 1,100 pesos (about $88) per packet and the rest was for us. Sometimes there were about three or four packets left over and we just divided them among ourselves," he said.

Sometimes the drug bosses used the children as lookouts in case police or soldiers approached, he added.

Mexico's cartels have also employed children for their hit squads.

In what may be the most shocking case involving a youth in Mexico's drug war, a 14-year-old boy born in San Diego and known only as "El Ponchis" was arrested in December 2010 in central Mexico and told reporters he had been kidnapped at age 11 and forced to work for a cartel. He said he participated in at least four beheadings.

The number of youths 18 and younger detained for drug-related crimes in Mexico has climbed from 482 in 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched his offensive against drug traffickers, to 810 by 2009. The latest available numbers indicate 562 youths under age 18 were arrested in the first eight months of 2010.

In Tijuana, officials grew aware of the growing involvement of young people at the end of 2008 as more and more youths turned up at drug rehab centers and told their stories, said Jose Luis Serrano, director of the El Mezon rehab center.

Serrano said that on average 70 adolescents come to his center each month with addiction problems, and about a tenth of them have also worked in the drug trade.

Jose Ramon Arreola, director of the department for children and adolescents at the Cirad center, has seen a similar trend. "There are a lot of drugs on the street; anybody can tell you how easy it is to get some," he said.

Serrano said drugs became extremely cheap by the end of 2008, with methamphetamine easily available and selling for about 15 pesos (a little over $1).

Due to increased border vigilance, "it became harder for the drug traffickers to cross the border into the U.S., and they started paying their employees with merchandise, which the employees then had to distribute along the border. That was when we noted an increase in teen drug use, mainly crystal (methamphetamine)," Serrano said.

According to the National Survey on Addictions, Tijuana has Mexico's worst methamphetamine addiction problem. The Tijuana Psychiatric Institute says it has about 22,000 meth addicts.

Serrano and Arreola point to outdated laws as one reason gangs have recruited young people to help push drugs. In Baja California, children under 17 can be jailed for no more than seven years even if they are convicted of serious crimes such as murder, violent robbery or involvement in a drug cartel.

Tijuana was one of the first cities to which Calderon sent troops to fight the cartels five years ago, yet hundreds of kilos of drugs still arrive each week for local consumption or for sale in other cities, military and police officials said.

The Sinaloa cartel, considered Mexico's most powerful crime organization, is mainly responsible for bringing in heroin, cocaine and marijuana, said Gen. Gilberto Landeros, the military official in charge of Baja California. Other gangs from Jalisco and Michoacan bring in mainly methamphetamine, he said.

"We are fighting the supply but not the demand, and as long as there is demand, there will be people producing and distributing the drugs," said Jose Hector Acosta, director of the treatment department at the Youth Integration Center, an organization that has been treating drug addicts for 37 years.

[Obraje]

Damn. Newt's plan in action. Why do we leave all the good stuff for the Mexicans to do? Don't we have good, cheap American child labor that could do this? Think of all the unemployment in Methland that could be wiped out. Vote Republican.

[expatriate2]

I commend you all for recognizing that this is a problem finding its roots in the United States. Usually, when there is an article like this, there are those claiming that it is Mexico's problem.

[Herne42]

The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which CANNOT be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.
-Albert Einstein- 1921.

Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of hemp fields. -Henry Ford-

"Began to separate the male from female hemp...rather too late".
"Female Marijuana plants are the ones worth smoking"...
-a correspondence between from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson. August. 7, 1765.

Make the most of Indian Hemp seed...sow it everywhere....-George Washington-.

Refusing to grow hemp in America during the 17th and 18th centuries was AGAINST the law. You could jailed in Virginia for refusing to grow hemp between 1763 to 1769.

OUR Government is lying to us, and has been since 1937.

Demand an end to the prohibition of Marijuana!

Demand jobs.... millions of jobs...billions taxing the byproducts...easy as corn....Like we used to.

[Overruled1]

I think that someone on this side of the border has interest in keeping the flow of illegal drugs across the borders.
In order to combat the Alcohol trafficking, the country gave up on Prohibition, today we face the exact same issue....and it's time to allow drugs to be legalized, move money from fighting the drug war with weapons to fighting the drug war with treatment.
How can this great nation with such economic problems continue to bleed money into Mexico and south American cartels?
50,000 Mexican people have died since the Mexican Drug Cartel War began. Too many judges,police, reporters, etc....have died.
IT'S TIME TO END THE BLOODSHED, LEGALIZE DRUGS SO THE CARTELS CAN NO LONGER PROFIT FROM ADDICTION!!!

[nehicks]

Legalize all drugs, Let those who want to, to grow it, or manufacture whatever they want. When they kill themselves by overdosing, good riddance. Kill, on sight, any drug DEALER you find. For all I care, leave them lying in the street for a couple days so people could see what happens to dealers. That is how you will stop the drug trade in the U.S. When enough idiots that use drugs die, the smarter ones will, either control themselves or not start. Either way, the U.S. gets smarter.

[honestabe8]

nehicks: which drug dealers? booze? tobacco? caffeine?

[ButterFlyStorms1]

The drug problem is an American problem and must be stopped in the USA. Quit blaming Mexico! Quit spraying dangerous defoliants all over Central and South America.
Spend your billions arresting Americans that are buying the stuff. The great addiction here is money. Take that away and there`s no reason to move drugs into America.

The drug problem is a problem of the country importing the drugs.

[honestabe8]

No, the drug problem is a problem of the country prohibiting the drugs.

[Herne42]

and the prohibitions.

The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.
-Albert Einstein- 1921....learn history...

Make BILLIONS and create jobs or spend billions and put people in jail?!?!?... Prohibitionists really are not very bright.

Education and Regulation... I never met a smart or wise junkie....ever. ...cookie jars don't work...please refer to Al Capone....

registered(which is stupid)Pedophiles, and violent offenders do not make good neighbors....just another f.y.i.

[Lerianis4]

Hey, easy way to stop this: legalize the ******* drug trade! We have tried illegalization and this is what comes from it, the same way that this came from the illegalization of alcohol back during prohibition.

[Herne42]

Half the drug cartels ARE children.....Failed U.S. drug policies created this mess. PERIOD.

Prohibition has been a stupid idea since it's conception.

Education and Regulation...I have never met an intelligent junkie....EVER.....Prohibition is an adult cookie jar. And creates criminals like Al Capone.

You have a registered violent offender or pedophiles living in your neighborhood BECAUSE of prohibition.

Another description of prohibition would be sanctions...and BOTH create wars.

Billions could be earned on the by-products of POT alone. Oil/Fuel/plastics, superior building supplies, medicines... the list is mind boggling. Anything from cars to tennis shoes.... Americans are fools for supporting the prohibition pot.

Prohibitionists are UN AMERICAN, and supporters of violence and pedophilia.....or are just plain dumb.

Write to your your local overlords and DEMAND an end to our VERY UNCONSTITUTIONAL view of Prohibition....people are dying. lives are being destroyed.... because of outrageous propaganda and outright LIES.

Time for the big companies/big pharma industries....to shut the hell up!

[Herne42]

truthbtruth....As a matter of fact... It's BEEN the U.S's fault since 1937.

recently released Pedophiles, violent offenders or just plain dumb people support prohibition.....which are you?

Obama wasn't even a thought in his parents head when these troubles actually began...learn your history!