Ecuador's school drugs problem

3 January 2013 Last updated at 07:18 ET By Irene Caselli and Maria Jose Bermeo Guayaquil

When 13-year-old Tamara Chevez came home from school last October, she said she was going to her bedroom for a rest. A few hours later her family found her dead.

Tests indicated that she had died from a mix of cocaine and sedatives, drugs she allegedly got while at school.

Although it was not the first such death in Ecuador's largest city, Guayaquil, what happened to Tamara sparked a media frenzy.

For several weeks reporters carried out investigations in schools, uncovering cases of drug dealing among students.

Unlike neighbouring Colombia and Peru, the world's largest exporters of cocaine, Ecuador is largely free of coca crops. However, the country is considered an important transit point for drug trafficking to North America and Europe.

And that means drugs are available locally for relatively affordable sums. A few grams of marijuana cost as little as $0.50 (30p), while a dose of perica, a derivation of cocaine mixed with other substances, is sold for $1.

"Cartels pay intermediaries through money and drugs. These intermediaries distribute drugs to micro-traffickers who use vulnerable groups to sell the drugs, such as boys and girls that have been excluded from the educational system," said Interior Minister Jose Serrano.

Drugs are not just sold around schools but within them. According to one head teacher, students find any number of ways to smuggle them in - hidden in pens, in the folds of their uniform or in the pages of their notebooks.

"Drugs are present in schools, just like theft and violence, because they are present in society. All the things that are present in society are present in schools," says Ricardo Loor, drugs prevention expert at the Guayaquil branch of Ecuador's drugs agency, Consep.

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Ecuador's school drugs problem