DEALING GLUE TO THIRD WORLD CHILDREN

...We are talking about a terribly strong addiction, and very, very young kids," says Jose Manuel Capcllin, former program director for Casa Alianza...

...If Resistol is unsniffable, street kids are likely to search for a substitute, though the alternatives in Honduras—gasoline and paint thinner—are much more difficult to obtain, and marijuana, the drug of older teens, is many times more expensive...

...Although many of the social workers were impressed by the documentation, none was allowed to take home the papers for serious examination, "I didn't get to see the studies," says Diana Vasquez...

...Companies marketing in the United States have used mustard-seed oil in their adhesive products since the 1960s...

...His proposal, which ended public discussion of mustard-seed oil, follows the spirit and even the letter of H.B...

...In fact, the risk of cancer from mustard-seed oil is remote...

...Oscar Sahuri claims that before the law passed he was unaware that children were sniffing Resistol, in spite of numerous prominent newspaper articles about the problem...

...At first he claimed that mustard-seed oil was not used anywhere in the world and acted surprised when told of the experience of the Testors company...

...We started a [therapy] program w ith fourteen kids and not om- ihcni would come for more than three or four da\s...

...Once the leader of a gang of street kids, he now has slurred speech and vacant eyes...

...Resistol is cheap and accessible...

...Again and again, individuals involved in the issue abandoned their own judgment and deferred to the company, assuming that Fuller had "the best laboratories and the best information...

...A year ago, Marvin began to lose feeling in his legs...

...H.B...

...Toluene creates the high the children come to crave...

...The commission dropped the mustard-seed-oil requirement and substituted a plan more favorable in H.B...

...Avery different story unfolded in Honduras twenty years later...

...This detail was not shared with the social workers or members of the commission, many of whom considered Sahuri's argument a key reason for abandoning mustard-seed oil...

...Millions of consumers eat the oil every day in products ranging from horseradish to pickles...

...The law was endorsed by religious groups and prominent citizens, including Miriam Azcona, the wife of then-President Jose Azcona Hoyo...

...In Managua's monstrous Oriental Market, in the garbage dumps of TeEd Griffin-Nolan, a writer based in Syracuse, New York, has traveled and worked all over Latin America...

...ing the decline in mustard-seed oil's effectiveness while on the shelf...

...Fuller also promised financial assistance to social programs for street children...

...Fuller, the largest seller of industrial adhesives in Latin America, bears responsibility for the addiction of thousands of Latin American street children to toluene-based adhesives...

...He believed it would delay the age of first use and give him and others precious time to work with the youngsters...

...The hard-core addicts will find another drug, but for the average kid, I think it would cut down [on glue sniffing...

...The legitimate debate over mustard-seed-oil efficacy was cut short by H.B...

...Francisca Elena Or-dunez, a social worker and former president of CONATNSI, finds it pointless to educate those who sell the product...

...Sniffing the glue is so common in Tegucigalpa, the capital, and San Pedro Sula, Honduras's largest industrial city, that the common name for street kids is Resistoleros...

...Senator David Durenberger, Republican of Minnesota, served for years as the company's legal counsel...

...The report was mailed just days before the 1989 presidential elections, and in the change from Liberal to National Party administration in January 1990, the issue died...

...In the most serious study to date, the NCI found that a male rat fed the maximum tolerable dosage of mustard-seed oil five days a week over a lifetime had a statistically significant chance of developing bladder tumors...

...Social worker Diana Vasquez has taken him to a hospital for treatment, but doctors offer no hope that Marvin will ever walk again...

...wonders Ordu-nez...

...As the economies of the region deteriorate, abuse of solvent-based adhesives is spreading from the children who live on the street to the marginal neighborhoods at the edge of the cities, where rural people come in search of jobs and find only despair, alcohol, and...

...Under President Bush's free-market, free-trade plan for Latin America, the region's governments, many newly established and debt-ridden, are being encouraged to get out of the way and let foreign investors show them how things are done...

...Toluene, the solvent in the glue he sniffs, is a neurotoxin known to cause irreparable nerve damage...

...Though Fuller officials in Minneapolis say the company doesn't want to formulate policy, H.B...

...Jorge Mahomar agrees that a law mandating the addition of oil of mustard "would keep many from getting started...

...Espinoza Murra refused repeated requests for a copy of his final report, as did the public-health ministry...

...The proud slogan on every jar of Resistol—You stick it and it never comes UNSTUCK—applies to the glue abuser as well as to the product...

...In the first of three meetings he says he had with H.B...

...When asked to back up the charge, Fuller's vice president for public relations, Richard Johnson, sent a chemical abstract saying that mustard-seed oil is not a carcinogen...

...To fulfill the education component of the Fuller plan, the company is supporting several outreach workers who work with kids on the street, and is also working to educate distributors about the dangers of Resistol addiction...

...He slides on his butt, spiderlike, through gutters, across streets, and along the sidewalks...

...As it happens, Honduran law already prohibits the sale of such products to children, but Resistol dealers are rarely arrested...

...When the law was brought to Castellano's attention, he called one man—Oscar Sahuri—to a meeting that same week to discuss a new approach to the problem...

...Fuller, which operates plants from Mexico to Argentina and generates 13 per cent of its sales and 28 per cent of its profits from Latin America...

...Many social workers and glue-industry experts believe that adding mustard-seed oil, a common food additive, to toluene-based adhesives is a safe way to keep young kids from getting started on glue...

...Fuller's interest in Honduran street kids apparently began when the 1989 law was passed...

...In addition, the company says it is drawing up plans to research additives other than mustard-seed oil...

...Clearly, the addition of mustard-seed oil will not begin to fill that void or solve all the problems facing desperate children...

...Peter Racine, a New Jersey native who directs Casa Allianza, had modest hopes for the mustard-seed-oil law...

...the Food and Drug Administration lists the additive on its "Generally Regarded as Safe" list...

...There is no official study about it, he conceded...

...On its own initiative, Fuller is discontinuing sales of its smallest jars of Resistol...

...Female rats tested had no such problems, nor did mice of either sex...

...I ullci...

...increasingly, glue...

...He worked in Central America for three years, documenting human-rights abuses, and is the author of "Witness for Peace: A Story of Resistance," just published by Westminster/John Knox...

...Anud nimh fanfare, Testors announced its formula change and offered the technology to other firms free of charge...

...H.B...

...Sahuri later admitted that he had drawn the graph himself...

...In a later interview, when the topic was raised again, he denied that the letters were dated as described, and refused to produce the files...

...Although the congressional file on Decree 36-89 contains at least a dozen mentions of Testors, Espinoza Murra claimed he had never heard of the company...

...A reliable source at the ministry says a high-level decision was made not to release the report for this investigation...

...Dagoberto Espinoza Murra, that mustard-seed oil is unsafe...

...He did not remember...

...Less than one month later, in November 1989, he recommended that the law be scrapped...

...Fuller was the intellectual author of the mustard-seed-oil law's death, Dagoberto Espinoza Murra was the trigger-man...

...Fuller is clearly in the driver's seat in Honduras...

...Hanging over all the discussions was the knowledge that H.B...

...They also hoped that the company's resources might help fund their own work...

...Fuller, the peddler of 90 per cent of the shoc-gluc in that country, did its best, in the words of one social worker, "to put the law to sleep...

...Fuller's Resistol, a common shoe-glue made with toluene...

...shoemakers in the market or a corner store will sell a child enough to fill a baby-food jar for less than half a dollar...

...gucigalpa and the high-rise parking garages of Guatemala City, the offspring of a decade of war and economic collapse inhale the hallucinogenic vapors from plastic bags held over their noses and baby-food jars hidden in the sleeves of their soiled T-shirts...

...Fuller's position...

...What worried us the most," says Espinoza Murra, citing the graph fabricated by Oscar Sahuri, "was reading that oil of mustard loses its repulsive effect...

...From what data...

...If H.B...

...They kinda come back to us and say, 'You be the authority.'" He admits to feeling uncomfortable with this role...

...Its chief executive officer, Anthony Anderson, is a former governor of Minnesota, and U.S...

...My legal adviser says that it is prohibited to give those files to other people," he said...

...Asked if she believed the company's assertions, she says flatly, "I don't...

...a home for street children in Tegucigalpa...

...If the purpose of Espinoza Murra's report was to bury the issue of mustard-seed oil once and for all, his timing could not have been better...

...He says that data from the World Health Organization and other bodies changed his mind...

...Oil of mustard," said Sahuri in an interview, "is the most toxic thing that could be...

...Fuller, 100 years old and nearing a billion dollars in annual sales, now wjns praise from environmental groups for its standards on chemical handling and is listed in Robert Levering's book, 700 Best Companies to Work for in America...

...Fuller donates 5 per cent of its pre-tax profits to community-affairs programs, and in 1989 was cited for a special award by Business Ethics magazine...

...He also produced an abstract listing the oil as a carcinogen...

...It is portable, easy to conceal, and produces an addiction that confounds social workers and psychologists...

...Apparently Espinoza Murra, the man in charge of sifting through the scientific data, did not ask about the source of Sahuri's graph...

...Most of the social workers interviewed for this article acknowledged that they felt intimidated by Fuller's "scientific evidence...

...In March 1989, the Honduran legislature unanimously passed Decree 36-89, which banned the import or manufacture of any solvent-based adhesives not containing mustard-seed oil...

...The oil, known chemically as allyl isothiocyanate, discourages usage by producing tearing and gagging...

...H.B...

...No one interviewed for this article believed that the police had any interest or capacity to curtail glue sales to minors...

...Dealing Glue to Third World Children BY ED GRIFFIN-NOLAN On a sidewalk in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, pedestrians react with alarm to the sight of a lanky, dark-haired boy sitting with arms curled around his folded legs, staring at the passing traffic...

...Dave Licht, technical director of Tes-tors, says that in twenty years not one worker or customer has been injured or poisoned by the mustard-seed oil in their glue...

...Dick Johnson noted, "There doesn't seem to be a lot of interest on the government's part to do independent research...

...It also produces symptoms ranging from nosebleeds and rashes in occasional sniffers to severe neurological dysfunction and brain atrophy in habitual users...

...Espinoza Murra's own files show that he reported his conclusions before gathering all the relevant data...

...Fuller Honduras, showed social workers and government officials a graph in which a thick black line dramatically descended from excelente to malo, supposedly show...

...It is too late for Marvin, but it may not be for his younger friends...

...As an alternative he proposed public education and a law banning sales to children...

...I believe in the mustard-seed oil...

...The use of Resistol is not a secret to anyone living in Honduras," she says...

...The Minneapolis company and Honduran officials have undermined a Honduran law requiring addition of a substance, mustard-seed oil, which renders the glue too nasty to be inhaled...

...Fuller has resources to commit to social agencies while the Honduran government is bankrupt...

...Research for this article was assisted by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism...

...Fuller officials deny that their concern stems from the additive issue, but prior to passage of the law no significant resources from the Minneapolis headquarters were focused on the problem, according to Muller...

...When Jorge Mahomar, who has worked with street kids for ten years, talks about a young friend of his who sniffs glue, the full human dimension of the problem becomes evident...

...Fuller paid for staff and operating expenses for CONATNSI, the national consortium of children's agencies, and provides significant support to at least three other agencies or projects...

...Fuller representatives persuaded social workers and the head of the government's regulatory commission...

...Fuller officials also argued that mustard-seed oil was a carcinogen...

...Fuller's evasion of the Honduran law demonstrates how easily a multinational corporation can have its way in the "emerging democracies" of Latin America...

...Yet he drafted his recommendations in November 1989, nearly a month before he wrote to WHO asking for information on mustard-seed oil...

...Fuller and by the susceptibility of Honduran civic and scientific institutions to foreign pressures...

...Using questionable scientific evidence, H.B...

...These unlucky rats, however, swallowed gobs of 93 per cent pure mustard-seed oil— a far more risky exposure than Resistol users would be subject to under the law...

...In a November 1990 interview in his Tegucigalpa office, Espinoza Murra, while following the Fuller company line, repeatedly contradicted himself...

...The new health minister, Cesar Castel-lano, was completely unaware of the law in November 1990, a year and a half after its passage, according to a source who works with him...

...It's kind of like tobacco companies being asked to police cigarette usage...

...The boy, a nineteen-year-old named Marvin, has been sniffing glue for ten years...

...In addition, says Licht, mustard-seed oil has virtually ended abuse of Testors glue...

...When he inhales Resistol," says Mahomar, "he hallucinates about his mother caressing him...

...Fuller, commission head Espinoza Murra supported adding the irritant...

...Until some sense of opportunity comes to the marginal barrios of Honduran cities, until alcoholism and abandonment by parents is reduced, social conditions will continue to send kids out to the streets, and the pain of street life will lead them to seek refuge in hallucinogens and narcotics...

...The law might have served as a model for Latin America—a solution that would have proved costly to H.B...

...The idea of adding mustard-seed oil to glue comes from the Testors company, which markets in the United States...

...Now that the law has been sidetracked, many of them wish they had spoken out more forcefully...

...Moments later, he acknowledged being present at a meeting with Fuller and the social-work community at which the Testors experience was discussed...

...When asked about this strange sequence, Espinoza Murra became visibly agitated, stood up from his desk, began pacing his office, and asked about the purposes of this investigation...

...In meetings with social workers Fuller officials handed out studies to show that mustard-seed oil has a short shelf life and is carcinogenic...

...Oscar Sahuri, general manager of H.B...

...Still loyal to their chief, the younger kids in his gang bring Marvin food, carry him to a newsstand to spend the night, and make sure he has enough glue to stay high...

...The government continues its policy of arresting child glue sniffers to keep them out of public view...

...Several states also passed laws mandating the add n ion and politicians of all stripes lined up to su pport the civic-minded attitude of the glue company...

...That was our hope," says Racine, "to give it a try...

...We have kids who are five and six years old who get drawn into sniffing glue by their friends...

...In Honduras, the drug of choice for children is H.B...

...Glue sniffing, once the rage among young model-airplane hobbyists in North American suburbs, dominates the days and nights of street children in Central America...

...You have to realize how young these kids are," he says...

...The social workers who pushed for the law in the first place hoped it would give them more time to help the kids before they got stuck on glue...

...In response to public outcry over glu<--snilhng in the late 1960s, the company \ oluntarily tested ninety-four potential additives, and settled on mustard-seed oil...

...When the Honduran law passed in 1989, H.B...

...Why not give it a test...

...Social workers who have seen the report say that it proposed education and control of sales—exactly what Fuller asked the government to do...

...He said that the company had not done research of its own on the safety of mustard-seed oil, nor was it aware of studies by the National Cancer Institute...

...Now he can no longer walk...