Americans Fuel Tijuana Drugstore Boom

With a practiced eye, Arturo, a Tijuana taxi driver in an open-necked, baby-blue silk shirt, sizes up the tourists trudging off the footbridge from the United States.

“Taxi, lady? You want pharmacy? I get you good pharmacy,” he urges, stepping from a line of beckoning taxi drivers in big belts and straw cowboy hats. “Good prices! No prescriptions!”

Soon he is nosing his long yellow Oldsmobile through scruffy streets choked with pharmacies. His customer wants Rohypnol--the so-called “date-rape drug,” illegal in the United States. In less than an hour, a pharmacist is handing the American a box of the potent white pills.

“Be careful with this stuff,” he warns.

Indeed. Rohypnol is the hottest new drug threat in the U.S. Southwest. Snapped up by everyone from heroin addicts in Los Angeles to teenage partyers in Dallas, the sedative threatens to become the “Quaalude of the 90s,” some authorities say. Worried drug enforcement officials are pushing for penalties for its misuse like those for heroin and LSD.

Rohypnol is “another nightmare for every parent in America,” U.S. Customs Commissioner George Weise said in March as he banned importation of the drug.

But unlike heroin or cocaine, Rohypnol has a respected corporate manufacturer--the Swiss pharmaceutical giant F. Hoffmann-La Roche, which produces it in Mexico City.

And instead of being sold by gun-toting traffickers, it is available in much of Latin America with a doctor’s prescription--often easily obtained. It appears to be crossing the U.S. border via booming pharmacies in cities such as Tijuana.

While the company has tried to avert smuggling, “what we can’t control is easy access through these border pharmacies,” said Carolyn Glynn, a Hoffmann-La Roche spokeswoman.

The sudden popularity of the drug has returned the spotlight to Mexico’s border drugstores, which for years have done a thriving business with Americans but have recently exploded in number.

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So many American tourists are buying drugs that Tijuana’s pharmacies have doubled in the past five years and now number 700, said Ignacio Romo Calderon, vice president of the local pharmacy association.

“Everyone who has money opens a pharmacy,” he said.

With their cheap, government-controlled prices, they have drawn tens of thousands of Californians, often retirees, who snap up brand-name blood pressure, cholesterol and other medications, often saving 50% or more.

And thanks to looser regulations, the pharmacies also readily sell drugs that are unavailable or require prescriptions in the United States, from Prozac to treatments for AIDS and cancer.

On Tijuana’s Avenida Revolucion, a tourist strip where merchants hawk liquor and Cuban cigars amid the blare of mariachi music, bustling drugstores with names like Pharmacy America and New York Pharmacy ring up an average of $3,000 in sales a day, Romo Calderon said.

While they lack hard proof, U.S. authorities have told the Mexican government at two high-level meetings in recent months that they believe that the pharmacies are selling Rohypnol to young Americans. Mexican officials say they’re cracking down.

But a visit to Tijuana indicates that Rohypnol is still readily available--as are people like Arturo who guide tourists to friendly pharmacies and revolving-door doctors’ offices.

“Many pharmacies sell it without a prescription,” shrugged Carlos Aparicio, a white-coated shop assistant at El Fenix, one of a staggering 18 drugstores in a shopping plaza about five minutes’ walk from the border. His pharmacy is not among them, he added.

U.S. police first began to spot abuse of Rohypnol, the brand name for the drug flunitrazepam, in 1993. Although it has never been approved for use in the United States, the sleeping medication is sold legally in 64 countries.

But it wasn’t insomniacs who used the drug in Florida and Texas, where Rohypnol first became a problem. The small, inexpensive pills were popped by addicts to heighten a heroin trip, or by teenagers who wanted to feel drunk. Rock star Kurt Cobain overdosed on Rohypnol and champagne a month before killing himself.

Perhaps most grisly, Rohypnol is blamed in numerous date-rape cases. Men allegedly have slipped it into their companions’ drinks, rendering them unconscious. Since the drug causes short-term memory loss, women have awakened confused and disheveled, only to learn that they have been assaulted.

The Drug Enforcement Administration says it has logged more than 2,400 criminal cases involving Rohypnol. As it increasingly turns up in California, legislators are trying to establish prison terms for people possessing or selling the pills, nicknamed “roofies.” Last week, Florida put Rohypnol into the same legal category as heroin and cocaine.

“We are seeing it in Los Angeles, we’re seeing lots of it,” Los Angeles Police Det. Trinka Porrata said at a recent news conference.

Worried by the abuse, Hoffmann-La Roche has slashed its Rohypnol distributors in Mexico from 200 to 16. And it said it hired a former DEA agent, who established that there was no diversion from its Mexico City factory.

“We have actually cut sales [of Rohypnol] in Mexico by 30% to 35% as a result of these actions” and the U.S. Customs ban, Glynn said.

But U.S. authorities say they see no letup in the amount of Rohypnol hitting the streets.

For a reporter visiting Tijuana, buying Rohypnol was easy. Arturo, the taxi driver, whisked her downtown to Farmacia Familiar, where Americans were lined up requesting Valium and steroids. An employee demanded a prescription. But he directed her to two doctors on the block who would write one.

At a nearby medical office lined with oil paintings of Jesus, the reporter had to fill out a brief form asking if she had had ulcers or heart attacks or was pregnant. At no point was she asked her symptoms.

A white-coated doctor glanced at the form and asked what drug she wanted.

“Rohypnol.”

“Each prescription is $25,” he responded, pen poised.

The visit lasted less than five minutes.

Dr. Eduardo Alzua, the Mexican Health Ministry’s chief of regulation for Baja California Norte, says he is cracking down on such “prescription mills” and pharmacies that dispense prescription drugs.

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Among other steps, the ministry requires a special government seal on many prescriptions, he said.

As a result of such actions, Rohypnol has become much tougher to obtain and sell, several drugstore owners said. Nonetheless, in a visit to 15 pharmacies, a reporter found one willing to sell it over the counter. Others suggested nearby doctors who would provide a prescription.

And one drugstore employee said that for $30, he would obtain both a 10-pill package and the prescription. At other pharmacies, the price for Rohypnol ranged from $2 to $18.

“Four or five Americans a day ask for it,” said Miguel Angel Martinez, an employee at a pharmacy near the border bridge, adding that he did not stock Rohypnol.

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration frowns on the practice, there is nothing stopping Americans from buying most medicines from Mexican pharmacies.

U.S. Customs normally allows Americans to bring in a “personal supply” of prescription drugs--up to 90 days worth, to be declared at the border. That’s how Rohypnol used to be treated.

But a study by the DEA and U.S. Customs last July indicated that something was amiss. In just three weeks, they found, Americans declared 101,000 Rohypnol tablets at the busy border crossing at Laredo, Texas, said a Customs spokeswoman there, Judy Turner.

Similar results were found by Dr. Marv Shepherd of the college of pharmacy at the University of Texas at Austin. He had assumed that the bustling trade at border drugstores involved mostly elderly Americans. But a study he did at the Laredo crossing proved otherwise.

“The average age was 34,” he said. “You had younger people buying controlled substances, with Valium being the first drug [in popularity] and Rohypnol being second.”

Examining customs forms, he estimated that 1.5 million Rohypnol tablets were declared by Americans returning through Laredo between June 1994 and July 1995.

“My feeling was that a lot of the people were using it for resale purposes, for diversion,” he said.

On the California border, customs agents have nabbed little Rohypnol so far, said Bobbie Cassidy, a U.S. Customs spokeswoman in San Diego.

That may be because the Rohypnol problem is fairly new in California. The customs ban may also have helped. But some officials believe that returning Californians may simply be stuffing the drug in tote bags or pockets.

Not everyone believes border pharmacies are the main culprit.

The Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, a San Francisco group, recently conducted Hofmann-La Roche-funded studies of Rohypnol abuse in Florida and Texas.

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Sarah Calhoun, the clinics’ research director, said that more than half the young people who reported using Rohypnol had actually taken other drugs they received from friends or contacts.

“This is a big name right now. People will buy anything that people call [Rohypnol],” she said. “Border pharmacies get a bad rap.”

Rohypnol apparently also is being smuggled to the United States from Colombia, where Hofmann-La Roche has a plant. But what is turning up in Texas and California is from Mexico and appears to be coming through the pharmacies, the DEA said.

To fight the abuse, Hoffmann-La Roche plans to halve the size of its 2-milligram tablets to reduce their strength.

The company also announced last week that it will provide Los Angeles police with free kits to detect Rohypnol in urine. It has taken the same step in Florida to help convict date rapists.

Some U.S. officials would like even tougher action. Specifically, the DEA is pushing to have the sedative classified as a Schedule 1 drug, as Florida did last week. That permits prosecutors to seek sentences such as those imposed for selling heroin or cocaine.

Even if Rohypnol sales are curtailed, however, the border trade in depressants, diet pills and stimulants will probably still flourish, as long as Americans crave them.

At one bustling drugstore barely 50 yards inside Mexico, a clerk apologized for not being able to provide Rohypnol to a visitor.

But there were plenty of other options, he said. Would she like a $30 jar of chlordiazepoxide, a powerful antidepressant? A bottle of 90 Valium tablets for $110?

“It’s all the same,” he said brightly.