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The low price of synthetic drugs, as well as their potency and addictiveness, make it especially easy to get people hooked on them.
合成毒品价格低廉，药效强，易上瘾，这使得人们特别容易对其上瘾。
According to Ms Chavez, a dose of meth costs eight pesos (40 cents) in Ciudad Juarez.
根据查韦斯女士的说法，在华雷斯，一剂冰毒的价格是8比索(40美分)。
That is less than a bag of crisps or a can of Coke.
这还不到一袋薯片或一罐可乐的价格。
The United States and Mexico have made preventing drug use a focus of bilateral efforts.
美国和墨西哥已将禁止毒品使用作为双边努力的重点。
President Joe Biden and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico's president, discussed this when they met in Washington on July 12th.
7月12日，美国总统乔·拜登和墨西哥总统安德烈斯·曼努埃尔·洛佩斯·奥布拉多在华盛顿会面时讨论了这一问题。
“We are making an important transition to treating addiction as a health problem rather than a criminal one,” says Gady Zabicky of the Mexican government’s addiction agency, part of the health ministry.
墨西哥卫生部戒毒管理局的加迪·扎比基说：“我们正在进行一次重要的转变，将毒瘾视为一个健康问题，而不是犯罪问题。”
In a few places change is afoot.
在一些地方，变革正在发生。
A pilot project in Ciudad Juarez sends offenders to a special court that tries to avoid doling out any criminal conviction.
华雷斯的一个试点项目将罪犯送到一个特别法庭，该法庭试图避免做出任何刑事定罪。
The offenders, often young men who have been found with a small amount of drugs on them, agree to undergo treatment in exchange for a suspended sentence.
这些罪犯通常是携带少量毒品的年轻男子，他们同意接受治疗以换取缓刑。
If they complete it, they will have no criminal record.
如果他们成功戒毒，将不会有犯罪记录。
Jorge Ramirez, the magistrate who leads the project, says the drugs courts dealt with 7,000 cases last year.
领导该项目的治安法官豪尔赫·拉米雷斯说，毒品法庭去年处理了7000起案件。
The federal government may try to copy the project.
联邦政府可能会试图复制该项目。
But despite this there is little sign of change at the national level.
但尽管如此，在国家层面上几乎没有变化的迹象。
Government adverts are crude, says Rebeca Calzada of Mexicans United Against Crime, a think-tank, suggesting that drugs equal death and that people should “just say no”.
智囊团墨西哥反犯罪联合会的丽贝卡·卡尔萨达说，政府的广告很粗鲁，暗示毒品等于死亡，人们应该“直接说不”。
Mexico lacks treatment centres.
墨西哥缺乏治疗中心。
Those that exist are often shoddy.
现有的那些往往是条件差的。
The government is also in a muddle about another area of drug policy: legalising cannabis.
政府还对毒品政策的另一个领域模糊不清：大麻合法化。
Making it lawful runs the “risk of normalising” the drug that is the first step down a slippery slope for many people, reckons Xochitl Mejia of Tonalli, a centre that treats addicts in the capital.
在首都治疗吸毒者的中心Tonalli的Xochitl Mejia认为，对许多人来说，毒品合法化会冒着“使毒品正常化”的风险，这是走向滑坡的第一步。
But it would also help to combat the profits made by drug gangs.
但这也将有助于打击贩毒团伙的利润。
In 2018 the Supreme Court ruled that cannabis should not be banned.
2018年，最高法院裁定不应禁止大麻。
The government ignored the ruling, so in 2021 the court itself changed the law to allow people to apply for permits to use it.
政府无视这一裁决，因此法院在2021年修改了法律，允许人们申请对大麻的许可使用权。
Such indecision within the government hardly inspires confidence that Mexico can get its drug policy right.
政府内部的这种优柔寡断很难激发人们对墨西哥能够正确执行其毒品政策的信心。
