But the fourth word of this post is in quotes because it is sharply contradicted by the most comprehensive and recent government study on addiction to which we have access. According to the National Survey on Addiction (page 106), released in September 2008, only about 300,000 Mexicans have used cocaine in the last month, much less on a regular basis. Only about 750,000 reported having smoked marijuana in the last month, which is again irreconcilable with García Luna's figures. That's not to say that Mexico's growing drug use isn't an issue to which lawmakers should pay attention, but it would seem that the figures that García Luna is tossing around are unreliable. Or the survey is a sham.
García Luna did have another interesting factotum: he said that the annual value of Mexico's market for drug consumption is $811 million. But given the above, it's hard to know how much stock to put in that info.
Update: García Luna's declarations are all over the front pages of the dailies. No mention, so far as I can tell, about the discrepancy. It occurs to me that the explanation may well be the adverb "regularly", as in "regularly use". I never saw it in quotes, though it appeared several times in the article. Perhaps García Luna did not mean "regularly", but rather "sporadically". If that's the case, the fault lies with the newspapers.
Update: García Luna's declarations are all over the front pages of the dailies. No mention, so far as I can tell, about the discrepancy. It occurs to me that the explanation may well be the adverb "regularly", as in "regularly use". I never saw it in quotes, though it appeared several times in the article. Perhaps García Luna did not mean "regularly", but rather "sporadically". If that's the case, the fault lies with the newspapers.
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