New Mexico in Focus; 304; Drug Epidemic in Northern New Mexico

Major funding for Infocus is provided by the McHughan Charitable Foundation, enriching the cultural life, health, education, environment, and spiritual life of the citizens of New Mexico. How did drugs gain a foothold in northern New Mexico? The drug-related death rate is the highest in the nation and continues to climb. Our community is coping with this drug epidemic, next on Infocus. Hello and welcome to Infocus. I'm Archie Chapa.

In recent months, a lot has been said about the legalization of drugs. Governor Gary Johnson has talked about it extensively, not only on local media outlets, but also on major national news programs, including the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. It's an important issue that's getting a lot of media attention. But while people discuss the virtues of drug legalization, there is a growing drug epidemic in northern New Mexico. The death rate is four times the national average, from 1995 to 1998, in a county of 35,000 people, 42 deaths were attributed directly to heroin, while 35 to cocaine. This information and other important facts concerning the prevalence of drugs and the sense of hopelessness that comes from living in one of the poorest counties in the nation was the focus of a 12-page special report in the Santa Fe, New Mexican this past summer. The team that put that report together is here today. It's journalist Barbara Ferry and photojournalist Abel Uribe. Also here today is Lauren Reichelt, director of Health and Human Services for Rio Arriba

County, and Ben Tafoya, director of Oy Recovery, one of the few drug treatment centers in northern New Mexico. Thank you everyone for joining me today, and that's Oy Recovery, not Oy Recovery, sorry about that. I want to start, first of all, with you, Barbara and Abel, how did it come about that you started working on this project? I know that you worked about it for what, eight or nine months? Well, what happened was I'm the health reporter at the New Mexican and we had gotten some information from the Department of Health, some statistics. It was probably almost a year ago, I think it would last November, and they just had statistics about the drug-related death rate, which I knew very little about this and found them real surprising, so we wrote a story, we called the Health Department, we called some local people who were involved, wrote a very basic story, ran on the front page, and there was a lot of response to it, and we just got, I think, curious and interested in trying

to understand, you know, what was going on up there, you know, it seemed that if so many people were dying, that that was really just the tip of an iceberg, because a lot more people are obviously going to be living with a drug problem. So about, I think it was about about a month later, we went to, we went up there and started asking questions, there was a doctor, Dr. Marie Ryan, who's a general practitioner, who was seeing a lot of patients who were using drugs, younger patients, adolescents, and we started interviewing them, and we did a story, I think, that ran before Christmas of that last year, focusing on teenagers, and at the time I really, I really didn't know very much about the situation, and so my focus was on the younger kids and how they were getting into heroin, and I just remember one day interviewing this, I think it was about 16, 17-year-old, and his mother came to the interview too, and I started talking to her, and it turned

out that she had had a heroin problem earlier in her life, and I think a few days later I met her for lunch in the coffee shop, and we talked, and I asked her how she had gotten into drugs, and it turned out that she had been with her mother-in-law, you know, years ago, so it just really struck me then that this was a three generations right there, and I think that was the first time I realized how entrenched it was, I thought maybe it was something new, and the more I talked to people, the more I realized it really had been around a long time, and it wasn't news in the sense that we think of his news, it wasn't a new problem, so we went back to it after the holidays, we went back and started spending time really trying to understand the roots of it, and the extent of it, and that was where this most recent story came out. So Abel, why did you become interested in working on the story? Well, I mean, the same thing, I came here in 1997, and in Santa Fe, at the New Mexican basically, you will hear stories about people, reporters reading the paper in Espanol,

and occasionally they will say, well, there's another overdrive over those, and I try to on my visits or stories that I was doing in Espanola area, or, you know, any other communities nearby, occasionally I will bring up the issue, and people will say, well, I know someone who's doing heroin or who's doing illegal drugs, and I will probably say, you know, you think you can maybe introduce me to this person, and I will leave my business card, but I never got a call back, and so up until last year that we finally decided to work on it at a more, you know, putting more time into it, no one ever, you know, called me back or no one, you know, I, it didn't go nowhere, and so last year, you know, once we started working on it, it didn't change anything, it was very hard, people were willing to talk to Barbara and tell their story, but the sooner as I would bring out the camera, they say, no, I don't want to be photographed, people are afraid.

Well, your story was very extensive, and I think that's probably the most in-depth coverage I've seen of that problem in New Mexico, and it was incredible, the pictures were incredible. How were you able to go there, and actually be invited to people's homes, because this is a very, how would you say it, I think it's a very critical kind of thing that people are going through within their own homes to allow somebody to come in and take pictures and to talk to them. How were you able to convince people to invite you into their homes and to get comfortable with you? Well, I was always surprised by that. I was surprised, I always wondered why people would be willing to do this, because there really wasn't much self-interest there for them to talk to us. There was only potentially risk or seeing something embarrassing and somewhat maybe shameful, something they maybe ashamed of in print, and I'm not sure I still understand that to this day, but people really, I think some people were at the point in their lives

where they wanted help, they wanted treatment, they were looking for treatment, and those people wanted someone to talk to, they were looking for an answer, they were trying to understand what had happened to themselves. I think because I came at it from a health perspective, maybe I wasn't really focused on the illegality or the criminal aspect of it that might have helped, but I'm still not sure why people did talk to us, but they did. Maybe one reason people talk to you is people in Rio Riba aren't used to having somebody ask them about their own pain and suffering. They're used to seeing themselves stereotyped at the press, and I imagine that people were very grateful to have the opportunity to tell their own stories and to be presented as human beings. Of course they didn't know what was going to come out in the papers, and I'm not too sure everyone was pleased with what they saw, because I think it's hard to read about yourself in that way.

But I think it goes back to the old saying of being sick and tired, being sick and tired. I think that if we were to remove it from a point of addiction, heroin, alcohol, or whatever drug we're talking about, and we're to put cancer in there. There was an epidemic of people in Chimayodine of cancer. People would say the same thing, look, we've got a problem here. I think we saw a lot of it when we had factories dumping chemicals, communities came out and said, we had a problem. I think that in Rio Riba is that people have brought it out of the closet and they're saying, we need to do something about this problem. To me, not that it's in a bigger than nation, I think we just have brought it to dialogue. I think in the discussion, and I think a lot of things have fallen into place, even with Governor Johnson talking about legalized drugs, this is part of the dialogue, and we need to talk about it. I wanted to ask Abel something. There was a little section at the very end of the 12th page report that kind of gave

bios of both of you a little bit, and it said that you got interested in the problem of heroin in northern New Mexico after hearing of the deaths of many young Hispanic men, and you decided you wanted to find out or understand why. During that time that you spent, say, eight, nine months, did you find out why? Did you find out why people were dying, and particularly men were dying? Well, it's hard to say. For the people that I work with, the people that I met, you certainly find stories, I mean, and Esparo was saying, some of the people that I met, it was generation. I mean, the person that I was working with, his father died of an overdose, and another family member had also died nearby, and it just kept going from, I mean, I think I can be working on it for years, and then still not understand it to some extent, but I mean, I talked to older people, for instance, who would say, you know, these young people don't

want to work anymore, and to, you know, some of the things that they were trying to say is that in the past, they used to work in the fields, and they used to basically stay busy around. Now, they don't have that. I mean, they're kind of a, in the middle of a change, you know, they cannot live off the fields, but in the other hand, there's not enough industry for them to work, and so you have this, people with plenty of time, nothing to do. And that was one of the things that I saw, you know, quite obvious, as just people would talk to me. So, you bring up an important point of economic development, and I think Lauren, could you address that? Would that help if they were to bring jobs in there, and that we could improve the economic situation of the people in there? I know, I mentioned that it was one of the highest, has one of the highest poverty rates in the country. Well, I think when you're talking about substance abuse prevention, the place you really need to start is with appropriate economic development, and I don't mean just simply taking a factory or something and plopping it down there, regardless of whether it fits.

I mean, creating some kind of economic development that will help to sustain the extended families and the other social structures that give meaning to people's lives. I think that one of the problems that we've had in terms of prevention is we've focused on telling kids to say no, and what we really need to be doing is creating a safe environment for kids to grow up in. That means an environment in which they have meaningful work in their future and something to hope for, and it means an environment where the drugs aren't there and where the adults in their lives are not tolerating the use of drugs. I want Ben to help me take me back historically into the area. You've lived there all your life, right? I was, I can't say born and bred there. I was bred there. I was born in public Colorado, but I spent like five days in Pueblo, and my parents used to go back, they used to migrate into Colorado and come in. Well, one of the big questions that the Santa Fe New Mexican asked in the very top of the

whole article is, how did drugs gain a foothold in northern Mexico? Can you shed some light on that? Well, you know, look at it from a perspective of everybody, but yet families, okay, drugs will gain a perspective, even within families, if the environment is there. Okay, part of that may be physical. There are some studies and research that, that there are some genetic factors where you can be predisposed to drugs, alcohol. Then there's the environmental factor, then there's economic factors. But I think if we want to look at how the problem came to be so big, we also have to look at the area, northern in Mexico, 400 years of history, 400 years of oppression in many ways. So the environment in many ways was created, you know, even through the WPA project when people were made dependent, taken away from agriculture and moved into the welfare system, created a dependency already.

So all those factors, and you know, if we had two hours, we could go through the history and find key points, that bring the environment to where the bottom line is that the values of those communities were influenced. And many of those strong values that were there are being lost, for example, the work ethic, you know, people believed very strongly that you worked hard, you know, that you didn't depend on anybody, but depending on yourself and your family, you know, even a breakdown in the family, you know, when we look at our general society, you know, we used to have what the agrarian family and the nuclear family, what do we classify the family now? You have two parents working, you have kids at home with basically nobody to supervise them except themselves. And I'm not saying it's bad, I'm saying we just haven't defined what the role of the family is. And I think you see it more within traditional Hispanic communities because that's what I call communities under stress.

They're continually under stress, they're continually bombarded. But then this is the other factor, this is, this is my own personal belief. It's also an area where you have the majority of people and presidents for drug offenses are minorities, you know, and I have a big question over this legalization of drugs. I had a big question over the use of methadone as a treatment method. I understand that there are certain people that are going to have to be a methadone. So there's a portion that will not be able to function on this, they use that. But methadone is also a method of controlling a group of people. So if I legalize heroin, then I have to depend, like my welfare check, I go on every day for the welfare hit. And I think that's what's happening, you know, and I think that's the danger that we need to look at. Well, we need to debate and we need to discuss. The real issue is that people who take drugs, people who drink, they all do it for the same reason because it makes them feel good.

You know, I think a reason that we're not able to come up with the answer why. One of the reasons is that we keep looking at this as a moral issue and a law enforcement problem when in fact it is an epidemic. And it's a very unusual epidemic because it's not a disease of individuals, it's a disease of communities and really of our entire nation at this point. Unless we're willing to address the disparities, the economic disparities and the social disparities that are the cause of this illness, we're not going to stop the substance abuse epidemic. I wanted to talk to Abel again because he took some photos when you were working on this project that I wanted to at least give you a chance to talk about them if we could show some of those photos once they come on. But you, I know you were talking earlier that you saw a lot of people die during the time that you were working on this project.

For example, this is here's a picture right here. Can you tell me about him? Yes, that's Alan Sandoval from Córdoba. And he's actually one of the first men that I met when I went into that community and the reason I went to Córdoba actually was not necessarily looking for the users as I was at the time looking for the families of the people that they had lost families already. They had a lot of family members and he was one of the first to basically be friendly and introduce me to some other family members and I became friends with him and but a couple of months ago or two weeks before the publication of the story he died of an overdose and what was kind of ironic is that the same night that he died he had gone to the rosary of another another member of the community of Córdoba and basically that same night he died too. So they were both buried the same week. I want to ask both of you and able again what was what were you most startled about when you saw the human condition in the area?

I mean what startled you the most about what you saw? I think part of it was it was almost similar to seeing a family of alcoholism or who saw from alcoholism. I mean you have a family that is somewhat functioning within the same house but also functioning somewhat as if they were strangers. Here is this man we call him Peter. He's been trying to first of all he's been doing drugs for 20 years and he told me that his father had died of drugs too and he's struggling for years now to quit. He quit three or four years ago for about six months and his family somehow got through a period of relief and they felt good about it but due to some circumstances he went back into it and for the last six, seven months he's been trying to quit and he'll promise his family that he's going to quit but he somehow falls back into the same point today.

Okay and then I want to ask Lauren what is the county doing and we're almost out of time so I want to make sure I get to that. The issue has to do with community values you know and family values you know it's you come in you're very positive you know well you're in a treatment setting you're motivated you're high but then you go out into the real world like they say and the values are different and because you have been around heroin users or alcoholics you know you go back into those unhealthy values and that's where it makes it difficult. One of the things we talk clients is the longer you stay with the program the better your chances are. And if you're returning to a family where and the family you've already got drugs and I think that was the thing that struck me the most was to realize I think I had this preconceived notion that you got drugs sort of out on the streets somewhere are you failing with the wrong crowd and when people were telling me where I said where did you get your first heroin and they would say my uncle or my mother-in-law that was what started me.

That may be unique to Northern New Mexico you know like you go to Chicago it's usually the neighborhood but here it's it's a family problem and it's it's a you know the family is not just three kids you know I mean it's an extended family which would be 40-50 people. One of the women that you talked about in the story she was a sister who said that she had finally been accepted into a treatment program in Carlsbad that she knew it I think she was going to have to wait two weeks or something and that she knew that if she didn't go to her sisters and have her sister barricade her that she knew that she was just a phone call away from drugs I wanted to add from heroin and that she knew that she wouldn't make it till that time so a lot of people are slipping through the cracks Lauren what is going on at the county level what efforts are being made to do something about this. Well I think the most important thing if if the epidemic is going to be stopped is that we have to remove the sense of powerlessness and one of the things that creates that widespread sense of powerlessness is that people are unable to make decisions for themselves.

The infrastructure is not there locally for people to plan and make decisions. The way the way solutions come down to us the federal and state government fund a variety of different kinds of things some of them unrelated and there's no central planning mechanism there and so what you end up with maybe is five different agencies who have grants say to do assessments and nobody doing treatment because the resources aren't there for it or only treating one drug and not treating another drug. So what we've done is we've created a health and human services department and a health planning council that will be able to access resources centrally and to plan and to evaluate programs that are running to identify gaps and to channel funding where it's needed so that what you end up with is a complete health care system rather than a fragmented health care system and you end up with providers who are able to communicate with one another and

you end up with the public health community speaking with the law enforcement community which currently is not happening it's just beginning to happen now. The governor is talking about legalization with that help in that in that area. I don't believe so. I see several problems. The first is that we are going to be relying heavily on the courts to get people into treatment. Nobody's going to go into treatment just because they wake up and think it's a nice day for treatment. Things have to become so bad that it's better to access treatment than to be on drugs. Another problem that legalization would create for us is increased marketing. Already we have a problem with alcohol and tobacco companies targeting minorities and poor people and increasing their usage and I believe that this would happen with drugs that are currently illegal if companies could sell this and market the drug and the final problem that I see is that once you create a lobby right now we can talk freely about

heroin. It's harder to talk about alcohol because there's a powerful alcohol lobby. If you create a heroin lobby it will make it much more difficult to regulate drugs and to really even implement treatment. We have about two minutes left and I wanted to ask Ben I talked about this woman who was afraid to get back on heroin before she got into the program. Do you have that sense that a lot of people are falling through the cracks that you would like to help people but you just can't do you have the resources because you're with the treatment program there. What you're talking about is access into programs and I think that every program has a long waiting list, even though we make an effort to get them in as soon as we can. For example my program, we're funded maybe to treat treatment in a class per year and we're doing 600 class per year. Somewhere you sacrifice the quality of treatment. You have to balance that. We have groups and we've been criticized that run 30 to 40 people but in order for us

to be able to serve that many people we have to. The resources are needed. You have a line parchment with a lot of resources, treatment with very few resources so you can't you got to balance that and I think we can. We can't get people good access with a good time if the resources are there. And I was reading in your article that the states which to manage care program for Medicaid patients called Salud, I think that that intensified the problem that I understand. What does that reduce your Medicaid reimbursement? Manicate does not pay for substance abuse except for youth, enough for adults. This brown license. There's no resources Medicaid unless they change the law and the state says okay we were that's only in this state or that's I don't know on the other state but in this state you know one of the things that there's an asset you know and then Lauren saying that local control probably will provide a better access for services that way the county used their indigent fund you know because they do provide funding for services.

We have about 15 seconds left I want to ask Lauren is there hope? Yes there absolutely is hope. I think that we have put the infrastructure in place to begin dealing with this problem. Now what we need to do is we need to get the state and federal government to recognize this infrastructure and strengthen it. Thank you very much. I want to commend you for your wonderful story it was very in debt and gave a lot of information that I hope a lot of people got a chance to see it. Thank you. Thank you for being here today. That's our report for this week. Join us next week for a discussion on the water crisis facing the three city region of Las Cruces, El Paso, and Sudas Juarez. Until then from all of us at K&M, I'm Marci Choppa. Thank you for joining us. Major funding for Infocus is provided by the McEun Charitable Foundation enriching the

cultural life, health, education, environment, and spiritual life of the citizens of New Mexico.