Source:
http://article.wn.com/view/2011/07/17/Crack_hits_Brazil_late_but_hard_and_despite_booming_economy_/
Sunday, 17 July 2011
Crack hits Brazil late but hard, and despite booming economy, funds for a fightback are scarce
RIO DE JANEIRO - In the dark before dawn, social workers advance slowly down a narrow road dividing two vast slums, entering a landscape of littered streets and broken-down shacks, where an open-air crack cocaine market does business among piles of rubble. Escorted by police through this "cracolandia," or crackland, they look behind cardboard lean-tos, in corners hidden by overgrown weeds for drug users who emerge, dazed, from ragged blankets. Some fight and run. One frantic young woman, her pregnant belly bulging under her short top, starts crying and pulling at her hair as police officers securing the area try to pacify her. "Calm down, Taiane. Calm down," says an...
