From the San Francisco Chronicle: Business
was brisk in the Mandela shantytown on a recent night. In the glow of a
weak light bulb, customers pawed through packets of powdered cocaine
and marijuana priced at $5, $10, $25. Teenage boys with semiautomatic
weapons took in money and made change while flirting with girls in
belly-baring tops lounging nearby.
Next
to them, a gaggle of kids jumped on a trampoline, oblivious to the guns
and drug-running that are part of everyday life in this and hundreds of
other slums, known as favelas, across this metropolitan area of 12
million people. Conspicuously absent from the scene was crack, the most
addictive and destructive drug in the triad that fuels Rio's lucrative
narcotics trade.
Once
crack was introduced here about six years ago, Mandela and the
surrounding complex of shantytowns became Rio's main outdoor drug
market, a "cracolandia," or crackland, where users bought the rocks,
smoked and lingered until the next hit. Hordes of addicts lived in
cardboard shacks and filthy blankets, scrambling for cash and a fix.
Now,
there was no crack on the rough wooden table displaying the goods for
sale, and the addicts were gone. The change hadn't come from any police
or public health campaign. Instead, the dealers themselves have stopped
selling the drug in Mandela and nearby Jacarezinho in a move that
traffickers and others say will spread citywide within the next
two years.
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