In a poor neighborhood in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, the relatives of those killed and hospitalized for consuming adulterated cocaine oscillate between rage and the hope that this incident of intoxication “serves” to privilege the help of drug addicts, not the punishment.
“Let it work, let it work, let’s do something…!” exclaims Beatriz Mercado, who returns from visiting her son at the San Bernardino de Siena hospital. At 31, he is one of the survivors of the mass poisoning that caused at least 20 deaths since early Wednesday morning.
The hospital in Hurlingham, a suburb about 35 kilometers from Buenos Aires, is one of the eight that received victims of adulterated cocaine, mixed with unknown products, although it is not yet known whether it was a dosage error or a murderous will.
Mercado found his son in the kitchen. “I thought he had forgotten (turn off the light) and I found him lying on the floor. Bad, very bad, he hardly breathed, his eyes rolled back. It is seen that he had fallen forward, because he had a scratch on his nose”. She took him to the hospital, where he was put on ventilator support. “I hope in God, I hope for a miracle,” he says.
In Loma Hermosa, a poor neighborhood with half-paved streets and unfinished buildings, the AFP He was able to visit a place where a vast police operation allowed the seizure on Wednesday of cocaine envelopes similar to those identified by the relatives of the victims.
“Very sad”
Ten people were arrested, but the investigation was not what most worried the relatives. Although Beatriz had to file a complaint at the police station.
“We have to change the laws, because we are focused on ‘if they commit a crime, let them be arrested,’ but they ignore their condition (as addicts), even though what they do gives us a lot of pain and anger,” he laments.
“It is no use making prisons, let’s make rehabilitation centers, with professionals, with people who have love, with mothers. Between all of us we can change the future of the boys”, she pleads with a tired voice.
The first medical reports suggest a sudden, almost immediate effect of adulterated cocaine. With violent convulsions, and sometimes sudden heart attacks.
“The doctor who treated him was surprised that the other boys had died with strokes, some in the lung,” says Beatriz.
The brother-in-law of María Morales, 41, is also “intubated and in serious condition.”
He used cocaine with friends in the early hours of Wednesday. “First the friend decompensated, who died, and then he decompensated, asked for help, they brought him here (to the hospital) at 5 in the morning.”
“We want him to get ahead and be cured of his addiction,” declares María, one of the few people close to the victims who agrees to speak to the media, and rightly insists that the problem must be made known.
“We don’t have to judge anyone, behind an addict there is a family, a father, a mother, children who are suffering.” (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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