Can Somebody Explain Why Mexico Would Even Have Drug Rehab Centers Since Mexico Says Its Only a US Problem?

Even for regular families with addicts, drug centers can be ugly places. Parents commit unruly adolescents or even their adult children against their will for months at a time. Beatings are often part of therapy, hygiene can be poor and lax enforcement of regulations prevails.

No one knows how many drug rehabilitation clinics and treatment centers there are. The Mexican government is expanding a series of Nueva Vida rehab centers for teenagers, erected since 2007 with $205 million confiscated from a Shanghai -born drug trafficker.

However, it largely leaves the work of treating hardened addicts to nonprofit associations, some run by former addicts with little training. Many treatment centers are semi-clandestine, hidden behind walls with no signs.

A significant number of centers never register with the government. The former addicts who run them ask few questions of those who arrive for treatment, seeking nominal payment from family members.

Demand is high due to soaring drug use. A U.N. report last year estimated that 1.7 million Mexicans use cocaine, consuming 27.6 tons a year, nearly double the amount in 2002. Mexicans consume 3.9 tons of heroin a year, it added. Some 3 million Mexicans smoke marijuana, also a significant rise from earlier in the decade.

Officials put the number of drug addicts in the nation at 428,000.

President Felipe Calderon said drug cartels focused on Mexico as a market after per capita income tripled since 1993 to more than $10,000 last year nationwide and as much as $18,000 in Monterrey , a prosperous industrial hub near the border with Texas .

“This new purchasing power in the society has made the criminals modify their plans, turning from low-profile exporters to the United States to distributing and placing drugs in the big and small cities of this country,” Calderon said in a speech June 26 .

Zamudio estimated that more than half of those in drug treatment centers are there against their will, sent by family members with the help of police.

At most centers, hardened addicts are made to go cold turkey.

“There are multiple accounts of abuses occurring in drug abuse treatment centers, suggesting an urgent need for more regulation by the government and a more rigorous certification for the centers that operate. Using fear and the threat of physical abuse is no way to treat an addiction,” said Maureen Meyer , associate for Mexico and Central America at the Washington Office on Latin America , a human rights advocacy group.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/3574384
Why w Mexico has human rights abuse can this be the same Mexico suing AZ over human rights abuse ?