Speaker 1: This is Latino USA, the radio journal of News and
Speaker 1: Kurturre Latino uscix let Latino USA. I'm Maria Inojosa. We
Speaker 1: bring you stories that are underreported but that mattered to you,
Speaker 1: overlooked by the wrest of the media. And while the
Speaker 1: country is struggling to deal with these, we listen to
Speaker 1: the stories of black and Latino Studio United Latino Front,
Speaker 1: a cultural renaissance organizing at the forefront of the movement.
Speaker 1: I'm Maria Inojosa.
Speaker 2: Nose bayan.
Speaker 1: Or La Latino Usa. Listener, Here's an episode the Los Archivos.
Speaker 1: Before he kicked the habit, Robert Bedda shot heroin for
Speaker 1: almost fifty years.
Speaker 2: Drugs always been a problem for me. And when you
Speaker 2: shoot drugs, you use drugs, and you have drugs, you
Speaker 2: don't have no problems a drug, use it with drugs
Speaker 2: as a happy person. It's when you don't have it
Speaker 2: that the problem again, you know.
Speaker 1: And Robert's problem with drugs led to legal trouble. He
Speaker 1: was in and out of jail for most of his life,
Speaker 1: starting when he was just eleven years old. Today, Robert
Speaker 1: lives back in his hometown of Fajarre, Puerto Rico, he's
Speaker 1: a wiry sixty nine years old.
Speaker 2: I don't look it and I don't act it, but
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 3: A little under.
Speaker 1: Ten years ago, Robert was picked up by the police
Speaker 1: and convicted for possession of stolen articles. The court in
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico gave him an option go to prison for
Speaker 1: three years or spend eighteen months in a place called ogargrea.
Speaker 1: Oga means home in Spanish, and Grea could mean create
Speaker 1: or to believe, but it's also an acronym. It stands
Speaker 1: for Comnidad barralare lugascion readictos, or in English, community for
Speaker 1: the re Education of Attics. It's a drug treatment program
Speaker 1: and their representatives are all over the island of Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: even in the courthouse.
Speaker 2: I didn't know they were coming. I didn't ask for
Speaker 2: them to come. They were at the court room when
Speaker 2: I got there, and they asked me would I like
Speaker 2: to go to go to jail.
Speaker 1: Robert chose to go to Grea. He thought, why not,
Speaker 1: I'll try this out. During his stay at Grea, Robert
Speaker 1: lived with about twenty other guys in a barrack style
Speaker 1: concrete dorm building, one of several on the property. Everyone
Speaker 1: in the compound was on the same schedule.
Speaker 2: By five o'clock, you got to be I get in
Speaker 2: a line by blah blah blah. You gotta say it
Speaker 2: a positive statement for the morning. Then you wait a while.
Speaker 2: They called breakfast, You eat breakfast, and then the day starts.
Speaker 2: You go on to therapy.
Speaker 1: But therapy in this case is not what you normally
Speaker 1: think about when you think of therapy. This one involves
Speaker 1: putting on a bright yellow T shirt, going door to
Speaker 1: door and selling baked goods. Oh god, Grea I calls
Speaker 1: this sales and representation, therapy.
Speaker 2: Sales and representation. That's one of the therapy sessions that they got.
Speaker 2: I'm laughing because it's comical.
Speaker 1: And if you've spent significant time in Puerto Rico, chances
Speaker 1: are you've experienced their famous sales pitch yo. After detox.
Speaker 1: As soon as they can walk right, Grea residents are
Speaker 1: sent into the streets to sell things, mostly cakes and
Speaker 1: custards produced by an industrial sized bakery owned by Grea itself.
Speaker 1: They're outside in the hot sun all day. They're often
Speaker 1: given no food or water, and they can't return until
Speaker 1: they've sold everything. Once they're back, they fork over all
Speaker 1: the cash they made to Grea. The theory is that soliciting,
Speaker 1: sometimes literally standing in busy intersections selling cookies and cakes,
Speaker 1: will help addicts to stop doing drugs. It also just
Speaker 1: so happens to bring in a lot of money for Korea.
Speaker 1: Robert thought he knew what o God Krea had in
Speaker 1: store for him. He went in hoping it would do
Speaker 1: him some good and maybe even help him get off
Speaker 1: of heroin. But quickly he found out that wasn't the case.
Speaker 2: Great exist for a long time, so I figured it
Speaker 2: would be more professional. I figure it would be more helpful,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't. Nobody there but the knowledge you know
Speaker 2: to help you.
Speaker 1: From Futuro Media and PRX, It's Latino Usa. I'm Marien
Speaker 1: no Hoosa today the story of the controversial drug treatment
Speaker 1: program that dominates in Puerto Rico and some of the
Speaker 1: strange things that are reported to happen inside. You've probably
Speaker 1: heard about the surge and opioid and heroin use that's
Speaker 1: been ravaging many regions in the United States, but what
Speaker 1: you might not know is that the crisis is worse
Speaker 1: in Puerto Rico, and it has been for over half
Speaker 1: a century. There are as many as sixty thousand people
Speaker 1: who inject drugs in Puerto Rico. That's about two percent
Speaker 1: of the island's population. That means that people in Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: give or take, are about eight times more likely to
Speaker 1: inject drugs than the US population as a whole. The
Speaker 1: largest drug treatment provider on the island is ogri Grea.
Speaker 1: They run about sixty centers in Puerto Rico, not to
Speaker 1: mention many others on the US mainland and elsewhere in
Speaker 1: Latin America. In addition to their own fundraising efforts, Ogdgrea
Speaker 1: receives millions of dollars in funding from both local and
Speaker 1: federal governments. Despite being the biggest and best funded rehab
Speaker 1: on the island, ogri Grea and their treatment methods have
Speaker 1: been controversial, some would even say abusive. I'm going to
Speaker 1: hand it off now to reporter What Cotler, who's been
Speaker 1: working on this story for over a year. We're going
Speaker 1: to learn about OGD kream, its background, and the larger
Speaker 1: than life man who founded it. Oh and by the way,
Speaker 1: there's some adult language in this story, which we've believed.
Speaker 3: Pretty much everyone in Puerto Rico either knows someone or
Speaker 3: knows of someone who has been through Ogdkrea for over
Speaker 3: fifty years. CREA has been the rehab center on the
Speaker 3: island and heroin has been the drug of choice for
Speaker 3: Puerto Ricans. OGA Crea was founded by a man named
Speaker 3: Juan Jose Garcia Rios, better known by his nickname che Juan.
Speaker 3: He eventually became such an important figure in Puerto Rico
Speaker 3: that he had a rendition of his life story released
Speaker 3: on vinyl. The record is in the style of an
Speaker 3: old radio drama. The record chronicles chehuan struggle with drugs
Speaker 3: from the first time he smoked marijuana when he was ten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, OK, what I say.
Speaker 3: According to the record, he developed some bad habits when
Speaker 3: he visited New York City at age fifteen.
Speaker 2: Come on, honey, let's damn.
Speaker 3: At sixteen, he started using heroin. Eventually, Chihuan's arrested and
Speaker 3: sentenced to three to five years in prison. While serving
Speaker 3: his sentence, he worked in the prison library and became
Speaker 3: an avid reader. He developed the belief that Puerto Rican
Speaker 3: migration to New York City and the resulting economic stress,
Speaker 3: culture shock, and discrimination were at the root of many
Speaker 3: Puerto Rican's addictions. He also noticed that many people from
Speaker 3: the island were returning from the Vietnam War with substance
Speaker 3: abuse problems. Chihuan founded Roger Crea when he was released
Speaker 3: from prison in nineteen sixty eight. His aim was to
Speaker 3: create a re educational program, a therapeutic community where people
Speaker 3: could live together and start over without drugs. He designed
Speaker 3: and Crea not only as a rehab center, but as
Speaker 3: a long term housing facility for people with nowhere else
Speaker 3: to go. It will become the treatment facility for everyone
Speaker 3: from national celebrities to the average citizen, and in fact,
Speaker 3: Puerto Rican celebrities did in the Berea, especially musicians. CREA
Speaker 3: even had its own in house salsa orchestra, made up
Speaker 3: of musicians who went through the program, like percussionists Cheo
Speaker 3: Feliciano and legendary vocalist Frankie Hernandez. The group even released
Speaker 3: a salsa album on Fania Records called Impactos Crea. When
Speaker 3: CREA began, there were virtually no other drug treatment centers
Speaker 3: on the island. By nineteen seventy three, it expanded from
Speaker 3: a handful of residents living in a group home to
Speaker 3: a federation of over thirty facilities. Before long, che Juan
Speaker 3: was looked at as a hero, he had revolutionized drug
Speaker 3: treatment in Puerto Rico. The so called therapeutic community treatment
Speaker 3: model was popular in the United States at the time.
Speaker 3: Heroin auticts, alcoholics, and potsmokers would all live together to
Speaker 3: help each other stay out of trouble, taking turns leading
Speaker 3: group therapy sessions. It was designed to be a democratic,
Speaker 3: participant led environment where people could learn job skills, good habits,
Speaker 3: and eventually re enter society without their addictions. Based on
Speaker 3: his own experiences and readings, Chihuan added his own twists
Speaker 3: that made his organization unique. He was brilliant at raising money.
Speaker 3: Not only did he convince the government to give Krea
Speaker 3: enormous financial support, he also made fundraising part of the
Speaker 3: treatment itself. That's the sales and representation therapy we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 3: Chihuan folded religion into his unique treatment model as well,
Speaker 3: because of the role faith played in his own recovery.
Speaker 3: Chihuan sought to bring participants closer to God, the final
Speaker 3: step in overcoming addiction. But before being built up to God, well,
Speaker 3: attics had to be broken down. They had to acknowledge
Speaker 3: their problem. Ji Juan had a plan for that too,
Speaker 3: Confrontational therapy also known as attack therapy, it's the process
Speaker 3: of tearing down an individual's ego in order to re
Speaker 3: educate them, usually by forcing them to confront quote unquote
Speaker 3: unpleasant realities about themselves. It was a popular tactic in
Speaker 3: addiction programs on the Mainland since the fifties, especially in
Speaker 3: boot camp programs for troubled teens. According to their website,
Speaker 3: confrontational therapy is a central part of the Kraa experience,
Speaker 3: and according to Robert Pereeda, the former Kraa participant we
Speaker 3: spoke to earlier, some days they'd make you do it
Speaker 3: around the clock, that overnight confrontation.
Speaker 2: Twenty four hours a day, all night, without sleep, without nothing,
Speaker 2: without food. That's real, it's real, messed up.
Speaker 3: That was the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's yeah, twenty four hours do you confront people.
Speaker 2: It's all night.
Speaker 3: They sit you down in a chair and take turns
Speaker 3: insulting you till you're broken. That was the worst part
Speaker 3: for Robert.
Speaker 2: Everybody called you an animal, dog, that you ain't no good,
Speaker 2: that you yeah, don't mean, all kind of crazy. And
Speaker 2: then somebody come fu and they take you out and
Speaker 2: put another person in there. You know, and you don't
Speaker 2: have no sleep your tied. You know, they could say anything.
Speaker 3: The idea is that once you've been broken down, you'll
Speaker 3: realize that you need to change. Only then can you
Speaker 3: be built back up, free from drugs and closer to Jesus.
Speaker 3: And if you fall out of line, well there are consequences.
Speaker 3: I spoke to drug users in two towns, Fajardo and Caguas.
Speaker 3: Almost all of them had been through KREA and had
Speaker 3: stories of strange and sometimes abusive things that they went through.
Speaker 3: One guy told me that as punishment, they would shave
Speaker 3: your eyebrows or shave the shape of a cross into
Speaker 3: your hair.
Speaker 2: They treat you like wars and a dog. You don't
Speaker 2: do that to the dog, but they do that to us.
Speaker 3: Another mentioned that there were repercussions for everything.
Speaker 4: They caught you smoking and smoking.
Speaker 3: The guy translating here is named Panama. He showed me
Speaker 3: around Cogua.
Speaker 2: They would do a.
Speaker 4: Chain like a chain of cugartte butts black. If you
Speaker 4: caught your masturbating, you paint your hand your hand black
Speaker 4: and put a bell on your on your wrist. And
Speaker 4: when there were visiting days, you would have to go
Speaker 4: table by table to everybody who came to the visit
Speaker 4: and explain to them why you.
Speaker 2: To everybody else.
Speaker 3: The guys I'm talking with tell me about Vans that.
Speaker 5: They got him recruiting addicts in the street.
Speaker 3: They drive around town looking for down and out people
Speaker 3: to pick up and then roll out a center.
Speaker 2: That's the boss right there.
Speaker 3: In the very moment they're telling me about this, a
Speaker 3: blue and yellow passenger band with Claire's logo printed on
Speaker 3: it drives right by us right there. Got them, but
Speaker 3: it's everywhere, like at the traffic light. They guys selling
Speaker 3: the plastic bags.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: As as a reminder, this isn't some small, weird rehab
Speaker 3: It's the biggest treatment network in Puerto Rico. Despite the
Speaker 3: sometimes strange things that happened inside CREA's doors, the organization
Speaker 3: was hailed as a success in Puerto Rico and beyond.
Speaker 3: They expanded to the Dominican Republic in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 3: By nineteen eighty one, CREA had branched out to the mainland,
Speaker 3: opening a facility in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where, according to CREA's website,
Speaker 3: chi Juan was even given the key to the city.
Speaker 3: By the eighties, CREA was also in Costa Rica, Nicaragua
Speaker 3: and Colombia, among other countries in Latin America. In the nineties.
Speaker 3: Back in Puerto Rico, CREA continued to thrive. The Puerto
Speaker 3: Rican government was privatizing medical care throughout the island and
Speaker 3: as a result pretty much dissolved its own drug treatment programs.
Speaker 3: After that, there were even fewer alternatives to CREA, and
Speaker 3: taxpayer money both in Puerto Rico and the mainland flowed
Speaker 3: into the organization. Jehuan's hometown of Trujillo all don't even
Speaker 3: dedicated a street in his honor. CREA was here to stay,
Speaker 3: selling it to make goods and saving souls around the hemisphere.
Speaker 3: Coming up on Latino, USA.
Speaker 6: Was the main actor of violating human rights of drug
Speaker 6: users in Puerto Rico and Dominican rebubble.
Speaker 1: That's coming up. Stay with us, Yes, hey, we're back.
Speaker 1: And when we left off, we were telling this story
Speaker 1: of the meteoric rise of a drug treatment program in
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico Calledrea and the story of its founder, Chijuan
Speaker 1: Gria was growing and growing and expanding overseas. Money was
Speaker 1: coming in from donations and government grants, but also from
Speaker 1: great residents who were out selling faked goods, remember sales
Speaker 1: and representation. At the same time, concern was growing among
Speaker 1: people in the drug treatment world about just what was
Speaker 1: happening behind Grea's doors and about the potential for abuse
Speaker 1: in their confrontational therapy model. Joaquin Coutler picks up the
Speaker 1: story now.
Speaker 3: By the nineteen nineties, allegations of physical and sexual abuse
Speaker 3: in CREA centers started piling up, particularly in the mainland
Speaker 3: US branches. In Pennsylvania, nineteen former participants filed charges cousin
Speaker 3: CREA's top administrator on the mainland to resign. CREA had
Speaker 3: long been denying that abuse was happening. In nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: responding to the Pennsylvania allegations, Chejuan said, quote, the character
Speaker 3: of an addict is that they are liars manipulators. CREA
Speaker 3: would eventually lose their charter in the state. In Puerto Rico, Ogar,
Speaker 3: CREA was also starting to face scrutiny. Certain people in
Speaker 3: the drug treatment world were questioning the value of what
Speaker 3: CREA does.
Speaker 5: All what they do is work, pray in the morning
Speaker 5: and do more work. And I have groups of of
Speaker 5: assaulting each other.
Speaker 3: Doctor Salvador Santiago Negron is a former director of AMSCA,
Speaker 3: Puerto Rico's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association. He's
Speaker 3: a public health advocate and researches the effects of stigma
Speaker 3: and confrontational therapy on people who use drugs.
Speaker 5: There is a new data that confrontational therapy is not
Speaker 5: good for patience because that we mean there self imish
Speaker 5: is not helping them at all. We have a lot
Speaker 5: of discussion with this program because they were insisting on
Speaker 5: using that technique, but it's not premn at all.
Speaker 3: So to summarize that, was the former head of the
Speaker 3: government agency in Puerto Rico that deals in addiction, and
Speaker 3: he just said that based on updated science, he believes CREA,
Speaker 3: the island's largest treatment organization, isn't actually treating anybody. Despite
Speaker 3: being the biggest rehab in Puerto Rico, CREA had never
Speaker 3: been fully evaluated by an outside entity. Its outcomes were
Speaker 3: at best a mystery. But in the year two thousand
Speaker 3: that was set to change. The Puerto Rican government was
Speaker 3: going to start regulating drug treatment on the island. A
Speaker 3: law was set to pass requiring all rehabs in Puerto
Speaker 3: Rico to have their methods and results evaluated. The idea
Speaker 3: was to hold treatment centers accountable and establish some transparency
Speaker 3: about where government money was being spent. CREA didn't seem
Speaker 3: to like that. They lobbied to have the bill changed
Speaker 3: with the help of powerful evangelical leaders. Santiago na Grone said,
Speaker 3: lawmakers changed their minds literally overnight.
Speaker 5: They agree with all student the day eleven o'clog night,
Speaker 5: the CREA and all the groups met with very powerful
Speaker 5: politicians and they introduced that boss they are in their law.
Speaker 3: During a late night handshake deal, the Speaker of the
Speaker 3: House introduced a clause that essentially undermined the very existence
Speaker 3: of the law. This clause protects any organizations providing spiritual
Speaker 3: or pastoral guidance from any type of government regulation, including
Speaker 3: a valueuation. The bill passed with the clause. Since CREA
Speaker 3: is a private, faith based program, they would be legally
Speaker 3: exempt from government evaluation. This meant that CREA's questionable therapy
Speaker 3: techniques could continue unmonitored. The legislator who introduced the clause
Speaker 3: was the speaker of Puerto Rico's House of Representatives.
Speaker 1: It is so miss La al Daroldo, ex President de
Speaker 1: La Camera.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and one, he resigned from his position
Speaker 3: in Puerto Rico's Lower House after being accused of extortion,
Speaker 3: money laundering, and witness tampering unrelated to Crea. He was
Speaker 3: later convicted of corruption and sexual abuse of a minor.
Speaker 3: But while his personal legacy is tainted, Crea is still
Speaker 3: protected from government oversight. But there is one academic report
Speaker 3: about Ugacrea's treatment model. It's not an official evaluation of treatment,
Speaker 3: but the authors found, to put it plainly.
Speaker 6: Crea was the main actor of violating human rights of
Speaker 6: drug user in Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic.
Speaker 3: That's the voice of Rafael Toua, a co author of
Speaker 3: the report.
Speaker 6: Human rights abuses were committed under the auspices. So basically
Speaker 6: two or three things, but two mainly one. Confrontational therapy
Speaker 6: for drug users only makes things worse. How retraumatizing an
Speaker 6: individual that already has been traumatized, as if pushing you
Speaker 6: to that edge and breaking you down emotionally would make
Speaker 6: you understand and you to stop using drugs. That's why
Speaker 6: we talk about a revolving door. If you keep re
Speaker 6: traumatizing somebody, they keep coming at you, and you keep charging,
Speaker 6: you're making money. And then the second thing that we
Speaker 6: founded the report. That was horrible is that not only
Speaker 6: do you re traumatize them, then you tell them that
Speaker 6: for their own treatment to get better, you have to
Speaker 6: sell my good and work for me for free, almost
Speaker 6: the definition of slavery.
Speaker 3: Raphael and Intercambios for libel, essentially trying to get them
Speaker 3: to retract their report.
Speaker 6: We were in a court case because CREA really didn't
Speaker 6: like the report that exposed this. They said, no, we
Speaker 6: have all the right to do what we do. We're
Speaker 6: going to launch a lawsuit against you. Let's call a slapsuit.
Speaker 3: The slapsuit went on for almost three years, but unfortunately
Speaker 3: for CREA, in May of twenty eighteen, they lost.
Speaker 6: They lost, like really bad. What happened is they looked
Speaker 6: like the shady organization that they seem to be.
Speaker 3: One moment.
Speaker 5: Please.
Speaker 3: In August of twenty seventeen, when I first started reporting
Speaker 3: on CREA, I reached out to them to hear their
Speaker 3: side in Corpore. Unfortunately, connecting with them wasn't easy. Press night,
Speaker 3: I sent a bunch of emails and called over twenty
Speaker 3: times trying to get hold of their director at Dorfriguetoa
Speaker 3: or anyone else that would talk to me is not
Speaker 3: available at the moment. It was amazed extensions, voicemail boxes
Speaker 3: and dead ends. There is not enough message todays to
Speaker 3: make a recording exit in the systems.
Speaker 5: Goodbye.
Speaker 3: Eventually, I showed up in person at their headquarters outside
Speaker 3: San Juan in January. Even in person, I still got
Speaker 3: the run around if I give you your email, en,
Speaker 3: but I also got a new email address and a
Speaker 3: cell number to have it. Eventually, after weeks of phone tag,
Speaker 3: someone claiming to be the director of treatment emailed me
Speaker 3: back in May of twenty eighteen, declining to comment on
Speaker 3: their history, their styles of therapy, the lawsuit, or anything else. Fentanyl,
Speaker 3: the synthetic opioid that's responsible for the surge of overdoses
Speaker 3: in the United States in recent years, has been ubiquitous
Speaker 3: in Puerto Rico's heroin supply since Hurricane Maria. Hard numbers
Speaker 3: on overdoses in Puerto Rico are hard to determine, but
Speaker 3: we do know that statistics around AIDS and hepatitis on
Speaker 3: the island, both diseases associated with intravenous drug use, are staggering.
Speaker 2: Puerto Rico is an injection island.
Speaker 7: Half of the people that are infected with HIV AIDS
Speaker 7: are infected because of their history with injection drug use.
Speaker 7: It's just a monumental problem.
Speaker 3: That's Camilla Helpia Costa. She's a researcher on intervenous drug
Speaker 3: use among Puerto Ricans.
Speaker 7: Puerto Rico is the fourth MSA metropolitan statistical area in
Speaker 7: the entire United States, the fourth in hib eight's deaths.
Speaker 7: Ninety pc of our injectors in the island ninety am,
Speaker 7: I do you understand? Nine zero? Virtually all of them
Speaker 7: have hypathetic Okay.
Speaker 3: On top of this, what's known as the treatment gap
Speaker 3: in Puerto Rico is staggering ninety two percent. That means
Speaker 3: only eight percent of people on the island in need
Speaker 3: of substance abuse treatment are getting it. Because of their size,
Speaker 3: their influence, and their political connections, Ogricrea is still Puerto
Speaker 3: Rico's main residential treatment center. Ogorcrea receives about eight million
Speaker 3: dollars a year from government grants and programs. In other words,
Speaker 3: eight million dollars of local and federal taxpayer money. Tax
Speaker 3: audits also show that they own more than twenty five
Speaker 3: million dollars in assets, land, vehicles, equipment, et cetera. As
Speaker 3: of twenty fifteen, they operated sixty facilities in Puerto Rico,
Speaker 3: with fifteen hundred participants at any given time. The government
Speaker 3: currently runs just four facilities. CREA is what's known as
Speaker 3: an abstinence only program. It's an old fashioned philosophy, often
Speaker 3: accompanied by a religious component or the surrender to a
Speaker 3: higher power. This kind of zero tolerance does work for
Speaker 3: some people, and many former addicts do credit CREA with
Speaker 3: getting them off drugs, but critics like Camilla say that
Speaker 3: just say no doesn't necessarily work for everyone. They say
Speaker 3: abstinence only doesn't address the underlying of drug use or
Speaker 3: the danger of deadly diseases from needle sharing. It can
Speaker 3: actually make things worse. Camilla runs a much smaller organization
Speaker 3: called El Punto and La Montagna. Among other services, they
Speaker 3: do needle exchanges, providing sterile syringes for people who are
Speaker 3: going to use drugs anyway so they don't spread diseases.
Speaker 3: They also provide narcan, a drug that prevents overdoes deaths,
Speaker 3: to family members and friends of drug users. Unlike CREA,
Speaker 3: Camilla says her organization and others like it get essentially
Speaker 3: nothing from the government.
Speaker 7: If the government could guarantee money for us to do
Speaker 7: this work. It would also be allowing us to rally
Speaker 7: the masses, to educate the communities, and to actually wake
Speaker 7: everybody up on the need for drug Politzer reform, cariod
Speaker 7: to save lives. But we don't have that funding. We
Speaker 7: don't have that support from the government. Zero zero, and
Speaker 7: they know we exist.
Speaker 3: For Robert Padeda, the lifelong drug user we heard from
Speaker 3: at the beginning, Cray didn't help him quit heroin. He
Speaker 3: didn't even serve out his eighteen month crey A sentence.
Speaker 3: He left early, went to prison for three years, and
Speaker 3: kept using. But in the back of his mind, he
Speaker 3: kept wanting to lose the habit for good.
Speaker 2: You know, I've kicked maybe over a hundred times my
Speaker 2: life easy, over a hundred times. After all the years,
Speaker 2: I still used. I used, I used you. The problem
Speaker 2: is I didn't have anything better to do.
Speaker 3: But eventually he made the decision to quit on his own.
Speaker 2: I had served my sense, and now I was shooting
Speaker 2: drugs and the projects Cassio down the street there, and
Speaker 2: I came out to shooting when I got to the
Speaker 2: corner and I just I said, man, I'm tired of
Speaker 2: this bush. You know, and I prayed. I said, damn God,
Speaker 2: I'm tired of this. I gotta stop.
Speaker 3: So he took it upon himself to find some suboxone,
Speaker 3: a medication that's provided by a few doctors on the
Speaker 3: island and available on the street. It contains an opioid,
Speaker 3: but you can't overdose from it, and it takes away
Speaker 3: the jonesing. It doesn't really get Robert high, and it's
Speaker 3: a lot safer than street drugs.
Speaker 2: And there was a friend of mineus I used to
Speaker 2: work real loosely, not a friend, but somebody I know,
Speaker 2: And I asked him could he buy me something? Some
Speaker 2: boxing with a prescription. I mean people get him from prescription,
Speaker 2: but they sell them. A lot of people sell them.
Speaker 2: At that time, it was ten dollars each. I think
Speaker 2: I got a couple in my bucket. That's a little stript. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you cut it.
Speaker 3: Use the piece now. Robert himself is a mentor of sorts,
Speaker 3: a former heroin user who spends his time helping other
Speaker 3: people who use drugs.
Speaker 2: If you really really feel like you want to stop
Speaker 2: using drugs, my name is Robert. I help you all
Speaker 2: I can. I know what it is, I know what
Speaker 2: it's like.
Speaker 3: Robert is an outreach worker. He visits the shooting galleries
Speaker 3: every day to check on people, offering fraternity and support
Speaker 3: and sometimes life saving advice, and he believes that the
Speaker 3: work he's doing is more effective than Claire.
Speaker 2: But I really want want to help people to live
Speaker 2: a stable life. I would like for somebody to be
Speaker 2: able to get up every morning without being sick, without
Speaker 2: not coming out of their nose. Their stomach's all messed up,
Speaker 2: they can't walk, can't hardly breathe because they dope got
Speaker 2: you all messed up. And I don't think nobody should
Speaker 2: go through that. I try to do things for people
Speaker 2: so they won't commit the same mistakes I make. And
Speaker 2: it's gonna happen. You're gonna wind up in jail, you're
Speaker 2: gonna wind up dead, or you're gonna wind up sick
Speaker 2: for using old saybringes. People don't realize that they're looking
Speaker 2: at at themselves ten twenty thirty years from now, and
Speaker 2: all that time it's gone and you're not gonna get
Speaker 2: it back. I lost all that time, I lost my kids,
Speaker 2: I lost my wife. But you know, a lot of
Speaker 2: money and you shouldn't lose it.
Speaker 1: The founder of okram Chi. Juan died in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two, but his vision lives on. Grea's current director,
Speaker 1: ek Door Figueroa, has claimed that the abuse of practices
Speaker 1: there have stopped, but he has decided to stick with confrontation,
Speaker 1: sales and representation, and the faith based.
Speaker 3: Re educational model.
Speaker 1: A new law in Puerto Rico that would open the
Speaker 1: door for drug policy reform has been under debate since
Speaker 1: early twenty seventeen. It would establish a medical standard by
Speaker 1: which treatment programs like GREA are evaluated, and it would
Speaker 1: ramp up the availability of medications like suboxone. The bill
Speaker 1: is currently stalled in Puerto Rico's legislature. This episode was
Speaker 1: reported by Juaquin Kotler and edited by Marlon Bishop, with
Speaker 1: additional editing by Ruxandra Guidi. It was made possible by
Speaker 1: a fellowship from the Marguerite Casey Foundation. This episode originally
Speaker 1: aired in December of twenty eighteen. It was reported by
Speaker 1: Juaquin Cockler and edited by Marlon Bishop, additional editing by
Speaker 1: Druxandra Guili. It was mixed by Stephanie Lebau. The Latino
Speaker 1: USA team includes Victori Estrara, Renaldo Leanos junior Andrea Lopez Rusado,
Speaker 1: Joni mar Marquez, Marta Martinez, Mike Sargent, Nor Saudi and
Speaker 1: Nancy Trujuillo. Benilee Ramirez is our co executive producer. Our
Speaker 1: senior engineer is Julia Caruso. Additional engineering support by gabriel
Speaker 1: Lebiez and jj Carubin. Our marketing manager is Luis luna
Speaker 1: Ar theme music was composed by Segne Rubinos. I'm your
Speaker 1: host and executive producer Maria noo Josa. Join us again
Speaker 1: on our next episode. In the meantime, look for us
Speaker 1: on social media. I will see you there and remember
Speaker 1: yes Lunka Baye.
Speaker 3: Funding for Latino USA is coverage of a culture of
Speaker 3: health is made possible in part by a grant from
Speaker 3: the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Latino USA is made possible
Speaker 3: in part by the Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on
Speaker 3: the front lines of social change worldwide, and the Heising
Speaker 3: Simons Foundation Unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities. More at hsfoundation
Speaker 3: dot org