Havana/“Time of death 2:32 in the morning, cause: cardiac arrest,” summarizes the death certificate of a 28 -year -old habanero who at the beginning of this year died in the body of the Guardian of Calixto García, in Havana. The brief lines, however, hide a much more dramatic history of addiction, drug use and limited resources of the Cuban health system in the face of the advance of the advance of chemical.
“I was on duty that night and when I arrived I thought I had an asthma attack,” recalls Marieta, a hospital center with the name changed for this report. “It was accompanied by two friends past midnight on a Saturday that is normally a day that many cases of people injured with a white weapon come, cuts with bottles thrown at a party and also domestic altercations,” he says.
When she graduated, two decades Fajazones“. The newly incorporated doctors and nurses received the most conflicting shifts and in those long hours of the early Saturday and Sundaythe sanitary learned very well to “sew heads and injuries of knives while the patient’s plague almost did not let breathe,” he recalls now.
“More and more cases of drugs are increasing with drugs”
However, for some time the stone guest of the night guards has changed. “More and more cases of drugs arrive with drugs, especially with the chemical But in recent months we have discussed cases that have put all kinds of mixtures, “he explains to 14ymedio. One of the serious problems faced by health professionals who attend these patients lies in the lack of information about what has happened to them.
“An injured from an accident is known that a car hit or a motorcycle crashed, because the companions themselves have been saying, giving hairs and signs, but with the drug addicts it is not so,” he says. “We have had cases that leave them lying on the entrance ramp and run away so as not to face, others who are accompanied but those people do not speak, do not say what happened to it or say that it began to feel bad and already.”
Not only is the progress of drug addiction among patients treated in the emergency room. The medical sector itself is being shaken by the chemicalwhich is sold right now in Havana at a price that ranges between 150 and 200 pesos the dose. A pound of beans costs more than one of those papers in which the substance is wrapped for its illicit trade. In a country where basic products go up, this drug is still surprisingly cheap.
A young doctor tells this newspaper that among his colleagues “there are many hooked” to the addictive mix. “He is leaving the marginal zone,” he warns about the compound, “My girlfriend and several race friends are consuming it out of control, it is no longer a thing just as poor.”
Among his most complicated cases, some that have recently arrived with serious breathing problems and heart failure after having consumed the ‘chemist’
In guard bodies, a policeman takes note of cases that arrive with wounds of knives, shots or signs of violence, but the protocol for drug consumers who come in poor condition “is not so clear,” says the woman. “If it is a light poisoning or the doctor himself wants to report it so as not to put the patient in problem, but there are some that come in a state that is evident that they are very drugged and that is not how to hide it.”
Among their most complicated cases, some that have recently arrived with serious problems breathing and heart failure after having consumed the chemicalthe most popular drug right now in Havana. With a formula that can vary according to who prepares it, its base is synthetic marijuana mixed with drugs, some destined to the treatment of epilepsy, tranquilizers for animals or compounds destined for surgeries. Once hooked, addicts prove other very risky combinations, such as adding lidocaine, a local anesthetic that is easily achieved in the island’s informal market.
“I saw a boy dying who had not turned 18 yet because it took one of those patches with lidocaine that are placed, especially in the back, when you have some pain, it cut it into small pieces and consumed it, it immediately had neurotoxic and cardiotoxic effects, when they brought it there was nothing that could be done,” he says. “They are not only making mixtures with drugs that are difficult to achieve or more expensive, now the least controlled medication can be a danger if it is consumed incorrectly or next to other substances.”
Among the products most imported by mules To the island, covered by the exemption of food and medicine tariffs, there are only coffee, spices or multivitamins, but also the popular lidocaine patches that they have, in a population as aged as the Cuban, a wide demand. Light, without controls in customs and seemingly harmless, in the wrong hands these plasters become a danger.
In a very close society when defining illegal phenomena, it is surprising that there is hardly any clear term to define the trafficker
“After oral ingestion, lidocaine enters very quickly in systemic circulation due to the extensive liver metabolism that the compound has,” warns a doctor from another Havana hospital that prefers anonymity. “His action begins very fast and the signs of poisoning begin to be noticed between the first 10 or 25 minutes, by the time these patients reach a body of guard their clinical picture is very advanced.”
The Omertá It extends between addicts and their companions in hospitals. Detailing what they consumed can attract the attention of the police, which will press them to denounce the trafficker. Nestled in the poorest neighborhoods of the Cuban capital, the producers and vendors of chemical, Ambrose And other mixtures are, most of the time, rude people who threaten to retaliate against blows and their families.
In a very close society when defining illegal phenomena or weavers of the informal market, it is surprising that there is hardly a clear term to define the trafficker. That figure that in other parts is known with expressions ranging from the known camelgoing through Gomero until the explicit Coqueroin Cuba it just begins to have its own name. In a country where the illegal lottery, known as pellethas a wide catalog of terms and prostitution also loads with a vast vocabulary, the world of drugs, however, it is more sparing, as if words had not managed to evolve at the same speed as chemical It expands through the streets.
“Chemiquero Some tell him, “warns Pury, a resident in the neighborhood of the sites who knows well the damage that drugs are causing among the young people of their community. Proud to have” ten years clean “after he had to go through the addiction room of a psychiatric hospital, now he works as a stretcher.” I was in the monster and know him the entrails, ” Martí.
“Nothing but I see a little boy from that arriving trembling, skinny because it hardly eats and with the skin color cartridge paper I know that is for the drug,” he says. “It is one thing to see it in the movies, that someone who comes from abroad and another live it here.” Two weeks ago he had to move a corpse from the body of guard to the morgue. The official cause of death was a respiratory arrest, but Pury knows that the young man died “because of shit that is ending with everything.”
