I am a recovering meth addict. Having tried them all, I think meth is the hardest to kick.
Moreover, it's the only drug I know of that makes you impulsively crazy.
I lost jobs, a marriage, lots of money, etc., all while on meth. Doing wild acts.
You take chances you should not take, act differently with friends, etc. Meth addiction is easy to detect and hard to kick. Good luck to all who are trying.
Availability. Meth being now 1) cheap, 2) pure, and 3) widely available, the job of recovery is two or three times as hard as it was when meth was harder to get. Again, goo luck. -Estaban Goolacki out
44
We are neither Portugal nor Switzerland. Our problems are different and exponentially more severe. We do not have a strong homogeneous national culture and Americans are far less rooted to their communities.
We have many failed generations producing failing children, endlessly.
Get good pre-conception care and education to everyone and these sorts of problems will shrink. But who's gonna make that happen--or even believe in how necessary it is?
26
Forty years ago this year, I was a medical illustrator at Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn NY. One of the last jobs I did before moving to Texas was a series of charts for a study of drug use by 10,000 students at universities and colleges in New York state. The clear message of those studies was that the students who wanted drugs would find them, and that they would use whatever drugs were available. If they preferred marijuana but couldn't get it, they'd try heroin or meth; if they couldn't get meth, they'd go with something else. And so on..... Drug use is usually a symptom of an individual's wanting to anesthetize themselves in a life that consumed them in some way, a life that to them was not bearable in a sober state. We as a nation use more drugs per capita than most, and there is a terrible lesson in that, and much work to do in making this country a place where peopel do not feel they have to do drugs to get through the day. Some people are addicts by nature, and will use drugs of choice for enjoyment and to deal with their addictive personalities, but the majority are telling us something else by their drug use.
33
Meth is a choice. With very bad consequences, like death. Stop enabling these addicts to continue their addiction and live on our dime. When they overdose, do not resuscitate. Goodbye. Sorry you made bad choices.
9
I just don't get it! If someone were to offer you poison, would you take it? NO! So where is the education to young people that this stuff is poison??? I can't feel sorry for those willing to take a risk for a high. If you take that risk and get addicted, then I don't even want my tax dollars spent to help you. Yes, I understand that some people get addicted due to legit medical operations etc. There should be a two tier system for help. If you take these drugs for fun, then less help should be given, If you can prove you needed drugs for health reasons I say let taxpayers pay for drug rehab. Crystal Meth-- users, lock them up! They are a blight on society and useless. Only they can stop. Save the tax dollars for those who really want to get off drugs and didn't take them for fun.
6
The history of mankind is, in part, the history of the human animal striving to catch a buzz - caffeine, coca leaves, alcohol, opium, etc. In part, it is also the history of trying to figure out what to do with people who can't or won't stop imbibing so much that they endanger others. We are now at a schizophrenic place where we give people safe places to shoot heroin (which kills), but arrest others for smoking weed (which doesn't) a block away. Yes, people addicted to drugs (including alcohol) who commit crimes need to be incarcerated, and given treatment; Dealers need to incarcerated. How about trying something NEW, like putting REAL money into producing decent paying jobs, decent schools, decent housing and decent neighborhoods which might just lessen the need for many people to "escape" from their lives; we've never really tried that.
28
We needed to start a couple of generations back to have prevented much of our drugs scourge. Few addicts--few alcoholics--come from solidly nurturing homes. As a recent NY Times article reported--and as I've been saying for years--the true number of individuals affected by prenatal exposure to alcohol is far higher than has ever been acknowledged or detected.
But now we have huge populations of people who cannot live healthy lives--ever--on their own. And we do not have the resources nor would society permit the sort of daily monitoring and aggressive interventions needed to keep people with miswired brains from doing what people with miswired brains do.
And we can't prevent them from reproducing and adding more generations to the tide of misery. Children who can't learn and have poor judgment and impulse control fill our schools and those unfortunate children are not at fault, but they are a terrible burden to everyone.
So let the addicts who cannot find something to live for die. We can't save them, regardless of what treatment paradigm du jour the "experts" come up with on alternate Wednesdays.
But those who do want to rebuild their lives should get one chance to do so. One. Revolving-door rehab stints are not predictive of anything but lifelong addiction.
13
I don't disagree but most addicts do not die - the Times wrote an article about this just a few weeks ago. So what do we do about them?
3
So you're solution for this scourge is to sterilize addicts and then let them let die out? Addicts, like myself, haven't given up on life and we don't strive toward death. We work, we go to church, we have friends, we have families, we go to school, we love and are loved, we help others, we operate with society everyday. It seems to me that your viewpoints on addiction are limited. Cruel solutions are never the way to a healthy world.
27
CRYSTAL METH Is producing a plague of addiction and death, much of it entering the country easily via the border with Mexico. I'd be curious to know how those experts familiar with the problem would describe the most efficient way to prevent it from entering the US. One means would be highly pragmatic, but rejected on sight. Getting the meth sold to the US government officially for the purpose of destroying it. I imagine that it would be far cheaper to prevent its entry into the US than to engage in yet another chapter in the dismally failed war against drugs. That's a war where we've NEVER won a single battle, leave alone the whole shebang. Of course the dealers here in the US would be outraged. Their responses that would be predictably violent have to be figured into the calculus of how to prevent crystal meth from entering the US via Mexico, other borders, via boat or imported in cargo containers. In fact, I'd expand the idea to include heroin and fentanyl. May as well get ignored for a list of drugs to be bought up and destroyed by the US government, rather than just one.
2
Just echo what other readers said, people will self-medicate their physical or psychological pain with whatever is available--opioids, alcohol, methamphetamines, Xanax, etc. To get a handle on the addiction problem, one needs to understand and address the roots of their despair.
17
Doctor Steward is right, look at Portugal where they stopped spending mega money on chasing the addicted and are working with them in constructive ways, problem cut by a third. Filling the jails with addicts is not the answer but our Justice Dept. thinks so.
Pharmaceutical Companies and Congress are to blame as well, just imagine shipping 9,000,000 Oxycodone Pills to a pharmacy in a town with 350 people. Pharmaceutical Companies=Money=Congress make no bones about it!
Rehabilitation for addicts, and strong enforcement on dealers and traffickers.
Needle exchanges work but most Americans are too uptight to realize it.
Major Thomas B. Daly I believe what Portugal is doing is the correct path!
9
Penalizing users will not solve the problem. It's time to look to successes, which Switzerland has done with acclaim by providing the drug to users under a controlled environment where they receive therapy and housing (SWISS MAT - Medicated Assisted Treatment). Yes, people are hurting and until we collectively address the underlying reasons, the drug "war" will continue.
10
Athough Methamphetamine is a very dangerous street drug, this article's statement that it ruins teeth is misleading.
Methamphetamine does not ruin teeth or mouths directly, rather users drug-induced neglect of personal oral hygiene leads to accumulation of bacteria laden dental plaque which causes dental caries ("cavities") and periodontal diseases to run rampant.
The simultaneous occurrence of methamphetamine abuse and oral diseases (aka "Meth Mouth") is not a direct pharmacologic effect on teeth, gums, and jaw bones - it is an indirect effect of altered behavior (inattention to personal care) caused by methamphetamine abuse.
If methamphetamine abusers carefully brushed their teeth after eating, refrained from foods with high refined sugar content, and properly used dental floss daily their oral health would not suffer. Sadly, methamphetamine abusers do not do so because of the drug's effect on thinking and behavior.
Germs and poor oral hygiene cause "Meth mouth", not "Meth".
Accurate reporting and information is important in understanding and societal response to the scourge of drug abuse. The article's suggestion of direct methamphetamine effect in causing oral disease confuses association and causation.
82
More manufacturing jobs going to Mexico? Sheesh.
Sorry, had to relieve my own gloom at reading this article. I remember the meth craze in the mid-late 1990s. A crowd I fell in with. Lucky for me I don't have whatever gene causes one to go overboard, or maybe it was the nasty hangovers. For whatever reason I only used it a few times. But man, is it a powerful high. Really takes away insecurities and feelings of vulnerability. You feel lighter, the weight of life taken off of you. I get why people become hopelessly addicted and lost within that drug culture.
Of the people I knew who were heavy, long-time users one died and two went to prison. All bright, working and middle-class young people who would otherwise have had decent lives. These were not hopeless people going in. The man who died did so at a house party. According to the story I heard, people saw he was dead in the bedroom and went right on partying amidst paranoid conversations about what to do with the body. He had been their good friend hours before.
12
no one to blame here but the users and the suppliers. i doubt that doctors over prescribed Meth because a legitimate drug salesman/ woman was selling to the doctor. maybe we should let the police lock up anyone found guilty of possession for about 20 years and let the users rot. they all knew what they were doing.
2
Good thing it's illegal, otherwise people would be using it.
2
Re: "It can be converted to liquid, and has been smuggled in iced tea bottles, disguised as horse shampoo and hidden in tortillas."
Well, I had one tasty taco the other day that had me singing "Singin' in the Rain" and dancing in the streets.
Is there anybody in the US, over the age of 7, who does not know that abusing drugs is a stupid way to live? Really? Drug abuse is a personal choice and the onus of recovery lies squarely on the shoulders of those who made that choice, and any family or friends who care to help out. It is not the responsibility of any other people and treatment should not be funded by anyone who is not directly involved with the recovery. Personal responsibility for your own life needs to make a comeback. Now would be a good time.
4
Reading this account, one thinks of The Rolling Stones' lyrics "It's just that demon life that's got you in its sway..."
5
I live in Palm Springs now and meth use is everywhere in the desert cities. I would rather deal w/ junkies then tweaks any time (I prefer to deal with neither of course). Meth is so incredibly dangerous & destructive and it's a hole that few get out of once they fall in. At least the junkies nod out while the tweaks are on the go and busy 24/7. I think many people seek escape from not just physical pain but from mental stress & loss and they use these drugs. Junkies want escape from life and tweakers seek an illusion of an active life...sadly neither one is engaged in real life. Why are so many people in this country seeking escape from their lives? I think that is the core question. Meth destroys your brain permanently and your teeth and your skin and your heart etc etc. I think in the 60s the Hippies said "Meth Kills"...the Flower Children were right, it does but only after destroying the person using and everyone around them. I don't hear our govt addressing this. Apparently millions of Americans are in pain and can't cope w/ life.....why is that?
25
Terrible reactionary article. We all have heard about the Russians planting political propaganda in social media. Well, this feels like propaganda planted in the New York Times by the police/prosecution/incarceration industrial complex of America. We can't arrest/prosecute/imprison everyone who suffers from an addictive personality disorder. We can't arrest/prosecute/imprison our young people who like young people of all times haven't developed the judgement to avoid super addictive drugs like meth. They think it will be a good time and then WHAMO - they are addicted. This doesn't make them bad people. It just makes them people who need help beating a really tough addiction.
In fact, sicking the police and prosecutors on addicts is just a waste of money. It is much cheaper to send someone to rehab than incarcerate them. Oh yeah, labeling them as felons for life because of addiction is really going to help them.
Sure, there is no one size fits all answer. But putting addicts in cages, labeling them felons for life and spendingmore money on police/prosecutors/prisons isn't the answer.
8
I don't know. It's great if you are trying to lose some weight along with brain cells.
5
Let the junkies have at it if they want, we don't want to hear it.
2
This is the drug that President Duterte has been trying very hard to eradicate. It is popular among poor Filipinos, and we have so many poor because the catholic church condemns any form of birth control-in fact they still quote catholic scientists as saying "condoms have holes" The crystal meth destroys the mind of the user, and they in turn destroy the society around them. The wealthy Filipinos are immune as they live in high walled heavily guarded enclaves. The NYT has often condemned President Duterte, even sending journalists for the weekend to write a hatchet piece. Now you see the problems we have in your own country, how do you solve it?
6
This is the same drug that the police in the Philippines are murdering people for using and dealing. They call it shabu. Here in the United States no policemen are murdering people over using or dealing shabu.
On another note I saw a program where the guest said that this same drug, methamphetamine, was used by the German army right before they invaded France. To invade France they had to cross the Maginot line. The guest said the drug made the German soldiers fearless and allowed them to stay up without any sleep. So the Nazis found a useful purpose for the drug long before it became a menace on the streets of America and the Philippines.
3
People like to smoke, tobacco, cannabis, meth, smack, crack, crank, free base et al. Must be in the species DNA. They also like to alter their minds.
Of all those listed only tobacco is legal and one of the most addictive drugs known to man. Legalize it, all of it. Let people get high, let them have the freedom to destroy their lives if they so desire.
I imagine that in those areas of the US where legal, high quality, affordable cannabis is available the problems of heroin, meth, crack, et al. might be much less severe. we just don't know or at least I have not sceen the studies.
Time to find out, the Feds must re-schedule Marijuana on the Control Substances Act so study and evidence can be gathered.
Oh that's right! Two words. Jeff Sessions.
Sad!
17
Back? Just because production shifted from home meth labs to foreign sources doesn't mean it ever went anywhere. The meth problem in my hometown never has abated.
11
Substance abuse knows no socioeconomic boundaries.
Substances ranging from sugar to caffeine to heroin are abused daily by those considered poor to rich to elite whether white or brown or black regardless of drop out, graduate, or doctorate.
Social media defeats attempts to stigmatize select groups when those groups are likely to include your grandmother, the time has come to change the approach to substance abuse.
Unfortunately, those who came up with the ideas for the current approach are unwilling to admit defeat and move the nation toward a united future.
Time is the ally of those who want change. The enemy appears to be those who are resistant to change, resist efforts to redefine the future, and demonstrate a desire to make America great again by acting as though the country can survive by reinstating the norms, laws, and reality of the past.
Not going to happen - ever.
Yes, time is on the side of those working to Make America Great in a future they work to bring to reality.
Time, in time, will defeat all the rich old white guys who refuse to work toward a transition for the greatest good for the greatest number.
Time will tell how long it takes to refocus the history on the solutions of the next generation.
5
I'm the late 90s and early 00s. Meth is Austin was a huge problem. it was everywhere then, and even more so now. The violent behavior it caused didn't scare people, but rather it fascinated them. Much of the sexually transmitted diseases that are sky rocketing these days...are becoming resistant to treatments. Once the novelty of hookups thru sex-apps dissipates, meth is the only way to keep achieving self-destruvtive pleasure at all costs....no matter the risks. The epidemic is back in the city 18 years later.
5
The forever war on recreational drugs will never be won. We have proven this over decades. Criminalization fills prisons at a terrible economic and social cost. The predisposition to addiction with legal drugs (alcohol and nicotine) and illegal drugs has a genetic basis. We need to try another way:
1. Treat addiction as a chronic illness.
2. Legalize all recreational drugs.
3. Regulate the efficacy, safety, and availability of recreational drugs in the same way that the FDA regulates prescription drugs.
4. Administer recreational drugs in a controlled medical environment.
5. Tax the sale of recreational drugs and use the revenue to support the social, psychological, and medical infrastructure needed for 1-4 above.
18
good start i would also add the question to be seriously examinedWhat is missing in pur society that temprts seducesdrives people to fill a void intheir lives by using ..abusing drugs and pther harmful substances??
4
WASSAMATTA? You never seen a serotonin storm before?
2
A few years ago I read Mexican gangs were getting ingredients by the container load shipped from India. One would think this could be controlled.
4
It's strange that we continue to think D.A.R.E. has made a dramatic difference to deter the public of using drugs. The consequences have remained consistent and constant while the dissonance and accessibility seems to be on an incline. Perhaps Americans should be pondering why we haven't engaged our military on the cartels. Oh right, because the government and the pharmaceuticals are in on the epidemic and trafficking with them. I forgot
3
When I was in high school in the 80s, the kids who were going to the junior high to talk about DARE were the same kids getting loaded on the weekends. Mostly they were jocks and cheerleaders so I never took them seriously as I could easily see their hypocrisy. What really surprised me was that the “adults” could not see this as well.
I don’t know if the parents were in denial about the actions of their kids or just turned a blind-eye, but these are kids I would never choose to associate with as an adult.
9
The US is sick to the core.
10
Living in Portland, Oregon reading this it's horrific. Funding has to be available for addicts for 6 to 12 months of drug rehab and sober living. People who are addicts are sick with a horrible disease. If they have arrived at a level of heroin/meth use, they will rarely be able to stop by themselves. If they are lucky enough to have a family do a professional intervention, they may agree to treatment. One month of rehab won't do anymore than detox. They will need psychiatric treatment, cognitive behavior therapy, and work skills and sober living. And they probably were too stoned to fill out the Affordable Care Act, so their family will be faced with a huge bill, unless we step it up and provide national no questions asked coverage for this national epidemic. That's it folks, that's the reality we live in.
17
Do you have any family members who are substance abusers? I do, two currently living and one already dead. They refuse treatment. THEY JUST WANT TO GET HIGH.
10
I have gone to Alanon for a long time because of substance abusers. Treatment is only effective if the person wants to recover. I am very sorry for your loss. I lost a brother 40 years ago due to drugs. Usually addicts only want to get sober when they hit rock bottom (loss of home, jobs, food, and friends) except here in Portland, I see hundreds of homeless addicts in tents, sleeping on cardboard, and whatever else they can scrounge.
5
I am so sick of people who have no clue about addiction pontificating irresponsibly about this so called scourge;this stain. Those addicted are your brothers, sisters, children, neighbors. Don't indict us or dismiss us. We are not pariahs. We are here, right next to you.
15
Thank you.
3
I wish you had discussed the use of crystal meth among gay men. It runs rampant in this community, and greatly increases the possibility of transmitting HIV. I work in healthcare and see it running rampant, yet it is rarely covered in the news.
14
It doesn't raise the rate of transmission. The fact that you work in healthcare and are saying this is shocking. Gay men turn to crystal meth because of the social stigmas facing being HIV positive. The only thing driving hiv transmission at this point is misinformation like this and stigma around the virus.
1
"Crystal" is all over Las Vegas. I've been approached numerous times to buy or sell it by young dudes I've never met before. There's crack, sherm, spice (K2) and heroin here, too, but meth is far and away the drug of choice. In Wisconsin, a young boy's parents found crystal meth in his bag of Halloween candy. Even MORE shocking, here in Sin City, parents found some Halloween candy in their son's crystal meth! "Speed kills" as the old saying goes. To stop the thousands of deaths from opioid ODs, heroin should be LEGAL for CURRENT ADDICTS, under medical supervision, and given by prescription in decreasing doses to help them "Kick the Habit" and stop the thousands of needless deaths from street Heroin cut with Fentanyl to save money for the dealers....several of my neighbors in NE DC died of heroin overdoses caused by Fentanyl. The methadone rehab clinics often fail: I watched a friend who just got out of rehab shoot up that very afternoon. Can Congress and FDA bureaucrats "kick the habit" of getting huge donations and high-paying jobs for their family members from Big Pharma, which wants to keep marijuana and heroin illegal to keep out low-cost competition from non-patented, "natural" drugs?
3
Is there an editor in the house? Reporter Frances Robles writes:
"With no more meth lab explosions on the nightly news, the public forgot about the drug."
How could she possibly know what "the public" forgets? Does she have a secret machine that permits her to monitor the minds of John and Jane Q. Public?
Here in Michigan, the meth scourge never left the evening news or the front page of our local papers. New "one pot" meth labs are uncovered almost weekly by police in both rural and urban areas. I appreciate the Times' effort to sound the alarm once again, but PLEASE hold your reporters to a higher standard of journalism -- particularly as you promote the Times as a "reliable source of truth in a world filled with disinformation."
Perhaps you should hire back some of those experienced copy editors you fired last year!
18
I guess I was lucky to use meth when it was not so pure, and that I kept my job at the time.
Still, I remember long fully awake weekends, from Thursday morning to Sunday afternoons, when I crashed after a hearty bowl of menudo.
But I am a kind of peaceful person, nad most of it was spent wandering along paths in the San Diego bay.
6
Methamphetamine addiction has catastrophic effects on the brain, but the criminal justice system has yet to recognize this when prosecuting addicted defendants. The effects of this drug are terrible, and it’s time for the law to catch up.
I wrote a piece about this issue, “Mens Rea and Methamphetamine: High Time for a Modern Doctrine Acknowledging the Neuroscience of Addiction”, 85 Fordham L. Rev. 2417 (2017).
Hopefully the resurgence of popularity of this drug will inspire our lawmakers to reconsider how we criminalize our most vulnerable populations.
5
Questions to ask users that could offer some hope of finding root cause(s) of meth addiction: What prompted you to try meth, When did you first try it, and Where did you get it. Starting from these answers it might be more possible to know where to begin to stop it. Once people are hooked it's pretty much a losing battle.
5
dutchiris,
Sure, I'll play.
Working construction. Day after day, blah blah blah.... the need for energy and stamina along with pushing pain to the background means you make money.
When one is paid by the foot, you produce or go home empty.
Supervisor handed out "bumps" for those that wanted the help.
Was early in career and when job finished so did supply. For my limited short time use and availability is was easy to move on from. It was helpful and fun by the way.
Look to the long-haul truck drivers. Waitresses working double shifts. Techies running code for hours on end. Students studying for exams for days. Our military pilots. Peruvians chewing Coca leaves since time began. Etc. etc....
The list and reasons why (not all are help mates) are endless. It just is a matter of who gets into trouble with it.
12
I have been posting and arguing in the NYT for a while that it is not a US demand problem, but an undeterred cartel oversupply. This article confirms this:
“The cartels have inundated the market with so much pure, low-cost meth that dealers have more of it than they know what to do with.”
BUILD THE WALL and save at least the next generation of Americans.
5
Drugs come in at legal points of entry, by car, truck or pedestrian. They are NOT carried into the country away from those points in significant quantity. The wall won't help!
15
meth is cooked in the states. I mean maybe you want to build a wall around american cities?
7
The Wall idea is ridiculous. Ironically, It appeals to isolationists who like their private property. Yet, to build a wall, the government will have to condem 1000's of miles of private property. What happened to private property rights? Then there's the pesky problem of the Rio Grande.
Spend that money on infrastructure throughout the US.
The drug trade will never be stopped by a silly expensive wall. Drugs really can't be stopped, only reduced. Maybe.
5
There no mention in the article of the widespread use of methamphetamines in WWII Germany among the general population and the military. If you read the book Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler, you will have a whole different perspective on WWII, and we might all take this drug a lot more seriously.
15
No need to turn police depratments and hospitals upside down, just expand the morgue. Let them kill one another for the right to kill themselves. Send the armed forces to eliminate the suppliers, and like they do, take no prisoners. Easy peasy.
1
Oh sure, and what happens when they kill *you* to feed their addiction?
3
People are all over the place— speculating about causes and cures: parenting not pampering, problems with the family unit, parents at home— or working, the breakdown in faith. All of them may be right, or none.
So what to do about it? I've never read more cold-hearted proposals than I've seen here. Let them die? Seriously? Because it was "their choice"? It may have been a choice to believe the lie but I can't believe it was a choice to become an addict. Consider how drugs are sold and to whom. They are nearly always sold by a storefront, a "friend" — along with an implied promise of belonging. They are sold with no warranty, no return policy and no recourse for injury. They are sold to the unsure, to the sure, to the middle of the pack, to the outliers. But they are never sold with the truth — with an understanding of where the journey might end, of what the end will look like.
The main take away is none of the commenters know either cause or cure. But there are people who do know, who study this stuff. While the anti-government clan wants to cut money for research, the answers are most likely to be found by researchers. Best practices would dictate that best policies be applied to save our fellow citizens from a terrible existence.
19
The 100+ year old always failing US War on Drugs, America's 100+ year old Failure.
7
this article seems click bait-ish. Meth is a complicated and so is drug addiction. I'm not the biggest fan of this kind of reporting because it dehumanizes and makes these users to be monsters when in reality society has turned them away and people become reclusive and find escape through substance abuse. Change conversation from"most pure form of drug" or "most addictive form". This creates fear. Fear outcasts people. Does this make sense? I've been affected by this drug personally and it makes my hurt hurt seeing this kind of reporting. Thank u.
5
Forgotten by whom?
3
Breaking Bad was such a cute show, wasn't it?!...
3
Now you know why the criminal motorcycle gangs supported Trump and are happy, the justice department is focusing latino drug gangs.
3
Our only hope is the bio pharmaceutical industry. The addictive brain needs to be rewired. They’re working on this kind of approach now. Just a small tweak here and there and poof, no more addictive impulses. It’s like polio, here today, gone tomorrow. Give it ten years and have faith in the greed and cleverness of the worlds most brilliant scientists and venture capitalists.
3
Hmmm. The clear national trend is that through 2016 deaths from opioids are running way ahead of deaths attributed to psycho-stimulants, such as meth and cocaine. The Times reported on this trend in Sept. 2017. But Oregon is reporting the reverse?
I am skeptical.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/02/upshot/fentanyl-drug-over...
2
Why can't people, in a democracy, more of what they want. These are adults. It is evolution 101. Yes, it might be painful but as a fire might be harmful for a forest this epidemic might make America a stronger nation. At least that is the philosophy of our Great Leader. That is why we have put him up there so he can fulfill our dreams.
2
There should be advertisements which presents the dangers and the lives affected by the use of these substances to instill fear among the young.
2
This is sarcasm, right?
Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result, that's insanity.
9
I've said it before and I'll say it again. There are too many people on the planet and Mother Nature is going to thin the herd, by climate change catastrophes, pandemics or addiction.
11
Is there anybody on the planet who is not aware of what these drugs can do to them?
Given that, why should the down-side of their decisions be my problem? The down-side of my decisions are my problem, so the down-sides of their decisions should be theirs.
Maybe the solution is to stop trying to help. It hasn't worked, at any time, anywhere. All it has done is to shift the type of drug used to another one. How long do we need to keep doing this before we can see the obvious: People want to destroy their lives with drugs and they should just be left alone to make their own decisions about their lives.
Nobody is held down while drugs are injected into them. They make that decision freely and with an understanding of the consequences. Let them.
11
As I replied elsewhere, that all sounds great until an addict kills you to feed their habit. We need more compassion for addicts without fueling their self-destructive behavior. I have ready lost family members to crack, and other things, I’d rather find a way to help them.
1
We are all in charge of what we put into our mouths and into our veins.
2
That it was discovered in the 1890's and used in the second world war and even has the US FDA sanctioned uses, will make it hard to get rid of as easy as just saying No. That it is showing up in a Purer form means that Labs are making it, be they in the USA or other nations. China is having issues with drugs now on their own, so they will be more willing to help crack down on the trade routes.
The drug isn't as much the problem as the need to use drugs, The why humans have the need and how to prevent the first usage of the hard line drugs. I remember in the early 1970's going to Health Class and learning about all the forms of drugs and telling us to not take them.
Alcohol and then a bit of cigarettes is as bad as I have ventured out into the fringes. They are bad enough, the body being easily hooked on things is more of a bane than it should be.
Prevention and help should be more forth coming in our nation. Just jailing the addict isn't solving anything.
10
It is challenging to convert indifference and profiteering into concern and healing. Back in the seventies and beyond drug abuse was an inner city problem. Emergency rooms and jails were the preferred treatments. Methadone clinics were available for a more controlled existence. Drug abuse was a Black Inner City problem and lots of people died. Like every other social issue, drug abuse is seen in other places as well. Hearing a West Virginia Rep. almost in tears, talk about the deaths from drugs in Appalachia was enlightening. I wonder if he knows that drug abuse has been killing tens of thousands while drug manufacturers and other enablers have successfully lobbied Congress for favorable laws. Chickens do come home to roost.
5
I know from sitting in our local courts that meth is the drug of choice here.
8
Follow Portugal's example.Decriminalize all drugs.Take the criminal activity out of it.I know sounds a bit over the top, but as a RN who has worked with drug addicts for 30 years, our current system is not working.If the profit is taken out of it,the drug cartels and the associated criminal activity will disappear.
33
To paraphrase The Wire: how can we hope to win the war on drugs in society by restricting supply and access when we can't do that in even in prisons?
14
People always have and still want to get high. Nothing is going to stop that. The only solution is to legalize everything and manage it. That is the only solution.
76
Yes, legalize drugs, fine, and then what do we do with the human wreckage? The children abandoned, the jobs and homes lost, the human potential completely wasted?
3
it is better than criminalizing use, its no solution to the "need" or the destruction.
1
Oxycontin is legal. How’s that working out?
3
Indeed 21747 lbs (9864 kgs) interdicted seems to be a large number. However, if this is only 1 % of the pure drug coming across the border that is seized then it is a shame that the political system is unable to do anything. To put in perspective, the 99% not seized translates to roughly 968,000 kgs (sorry metric is better) or at dose of 40 mg (0.00004 kg) translates to about 24 billion doses!! It is mind boggling the number of users we have in our country. If the amount interdicted is 10%, then still we are dealing with 2.4 billion doses. Heck this lower number translates to 6.7 million daily users. Any politician reading this?
4
what do people want from their children? if you abuse the hope out of them they are going to do forgetful drugs
7
Decriminalise it. Self-medication should not be a crime. Drug addiction is a symptom. The disease is political, social and economic conditions that produce stress and suffering that injures and breaks. Not enough love, respect, consideration, acceptance, belonging and joy - and too much of the opposite of these things.
If you think you're immune to ever thinking consuming drugs regularly is a good idea, something you would never want to do: it just means you've been advantaged and lucky in life, whether or not you were blessed with uncommon natural gifts at birth and have studied and worked hard. Judgement and punishment just makes the suffering suffer more and the situation for you and others worse. Policing can reduce supply, education can reduce demand - but some will try and become addicted to drugs and prison is not an appropriate response to their fallibility, failing and falling.
Consistently electing leaders who believe in community, who believe in government, who understand and respect human nature and diversity, would lead to much fewer drug addicts and much less drug-related crime.
14
GWR : thank you for telling us " self medication is not a crime" I had recently either the flu or a virus. At first I did some self medication I was very happy it was not a crime. Then when it was not getting better saw an doctor. Again happy that going to a doctor and stopping self medication was not a crime.
However I was not aware as you stated " The disease is( or in my case was) political , However I agree it may be social. I did interact with many people before I became ill.Therefore making it social.However please tell me what laws should be enacted and enforced to insure there is" enough love ,respect consideration ,accept
The question I have for you is: What laws should be enacted and enforced to insure enough love ,respect .consideration.acceptance ,belonging and joy ... etc.would do to solve the the use of crystal meth?
Jim: Crystal meth (called "ice" in Australia) is a very powerful and dangerous drug. I want to reiterate that I am for the police trying to reduce the amount of it in the community as much as possible, and for education about its nature and effects in schools and the general community to put off as many people as possible from thinking it's the answer to or escape from their issues they want. My comments were more about illicit drugs in general. To answer your question though: everything that makes the US an outlier to comparable nations of the world such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand and different to the exemplars Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Universal free healthcare. Greater assistance to those who lose their jobs until they get new ones and to get them. Mandated paid sick leave, annual leave, paternity leave. Free or subsidised childcare and tertiary education. Sensible firearm ownership restrictions. Basically entitlements as citizens that let them know they are not alone and are wanted in their own country, that it is invested in them succeeding and living a secure and contented life, that reduce the amount and degree of stress on them, their loved ones and those around them that they may encounter, and therefore reduce the chances of them being neuropsychologically damaged and thinking taking hard drugs regularly is what they need to do to endure life better.
5
I hate to sound overly naive, but how does a person die from overdosing on meth? Is it usually, or almost always a cardiac incident, like a sudden stroke or heart attack?
6
No, it's a good question and one I also wished was addressed. Initial search results seem to suggest it's all over the place but includes strokes (block or bleeding of brain arteries). Seems like addicts become worn down physically on all fronts and exact cause of death perhaps hard to isolate.
4
The saddest part is that there are so many people whose lives are so impoverished emotionally and intellectually that they entirely lack the values, goals, and pleasures that make most people's lives good. If you are happy with your mind why use chemicals to alter it? If if you have worthwhile goals why waste time with cheap chemical thrills? Stop-gap means clearly are needed to fight the scourge of drugs, but the real solution lies in confronting the emptiness in our culture and in so many of our fellow citizens.
19
Alex: Thank you,however please tell us the real solution.How would desire to implement it? Would love to hear it. What are the steps "in confronting the emptiness in our culture and in so many of our fellow citizens" ?
What new laws should be passed? Also when we pass new laws that some people who do not feel an emptiness in our culture should by government degree they be re-educated to feel the emptiness in our culture?
2
Excellent comment, Jim. For young people who are allowed to grow up with the impression that life is all about acquiring more and better stuff, drugs may seem an appealing alternative. Personally, at the risk of seeming corny on Valentine's Dad eve, I think the "solution" you mention has to do with love--not more and better sex, but caring about other people, about helping to make the world better for everyone so that we can share in the pleasures of life. Different people do this in different ways. It's not about passing laws, though laws can sometimes help and sometimes hurt the process. It's about the attitude you bring to whatever you do.
4
Hi Jim. Different Alex here. My suggestions for dealing with the emptiness in our culture are: get rid of our focus on religion. Start teaching real philosophy like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca from an early age. They teach morals and life skills without requiring belief in things you can’t see. And start talking about the great bugaboo that everyone is so afraid of - our own, individual deaths. Fear of death creates a reliance on distractions. As to laws, eh, I got nothin’.
5
Sorry. This is human nature. That's why more sophisticated societies keep wars going, and why dangerous initiation rituals have been found almost everywhere. You skim off those whose most dangerous propensities will endanger the rest of the community.
Now these sorts remain in their local communities and cannot find a useful place for themselves. For God's sake, don't save them. Those who are actually salvageable will save themselves. The others not only take up too many resources we cannot spare, but stay alive long enough to have damaged children whose extended family is unlikely to provide a nurturing environment nor to have the resources to deal with permanently miswired brains.
It's a tragedy, sure, but every society must triage. We'll never be able to care for everyone. Let the most vulnerable and most innocent be cared for first. It's not a moral judgment but a practical one.
11
Methamphetamine use in our communities is a serious challenge, not unlike the explosion of heroin and opioid abuse that's reached epidemic proportions.
One would think that after nearly fifty years and hundreds of billions of dollars in expenditures in a failed 'war on drugs', that we might have learned something. Clearly we have not.
Firstly, addiction is a public health issue, NOT a law enforcement issue. Yet this vexing problem is never characterized as such. This MUST change if we're serious about tackling these problems.
Secondly, addiction in humans is a sub-conscious response to trauma. Usually childhood trauma, but not always. Unless we recognize and address our propensity to 'traumatize' others, we will NEVER EVER find an effective response to treating addiction today, tomorrow, or in the future.
This is common sense. That's why I don't take any article or policy pronouncement that fails to discuss these issues seriously. If we keep ignoring the facts and rely on band-aids to address this crisis, people will needlessly continue to die. And we'll be letting our families, friends, and neighbors down in the process. Shame on us.
6
Drug dealers get rich, and salaried Drug enforcers from judges to lawyers to prison officials and their employees don t do too shabbily as far as benefits and pay are concerned. Rehab is hardly a bust for a source of making money from insurance companies who spread their costs to all of us at the bottom of this cash cow... as they all do... the taxpayer. Everyone involved seems to be riding a gravy train upward even as budgets soar for all of the above except the wages of the ones paying the bill. We all know that something is wrong with the system but we just keep digging a deeper hole. And the poor guy at the bottom is the oine getting his Medicare chopped as well as the threat of Social Security being revamped despite HIS needs of a safety net that they have which he doesn t. And the NYT comments is the ONLY place that certain certain punctuation characters will not work for me on my keyboard and I have no idea why.. C est la vie? Unfortunately yes.
4
Sorry, but it's hard to keep up with all the different ways people are trying to kill themselves.
Treatment can help, but at some point it comes down to personal responsibility. Without it, no one will ever be saved, and no doctor or counselor can inject it into someone's heart.
8
The ready availability of meth is just one more in a long list of examples of prohibition not working. Prohibition makes illegal drugs so profitable that there is ZERO likelihood of ever stopping illegal drug dealing. However, there is a way to defeat the gangs and the cartels. Decriminalize all drugs. Strip gangsters of their source of funds and power.
There will not be more drug use as a result. Actually, without dealers pushing drugs, there will be less drug use. Shift the war on drugs funding that is being wasted now to treatment centers and education and strengthening children's protective services, to better prevent harm to children from parents who use drugs. Make the nasty harmful drugs like meth available through treatment clinics, so as to have the best chance to get users off the drugs.
It is time to stop doing the same old same old expecting it to work when it never has.
10
--------- ALL drugs should be legal. time for everybody to start being responsible for themselves . . .
4
Mark: Conditions and social mores in Portugal are far different from those here in the US. Just one example: Portugal does not share a border with a failed state that is essentially run by drug (and, now, fuel) cartels.
At most, we might decriminalize usage, but raise the penalties for suppliers.
1
the Congress and WH could care less, don't take my pithy comment, just watch, observe, and SEE their heartless indifferent 'action' to mitigate and effectively remedy this American scourge, American killer...
5
"Drugs go through cycles — in the 1980s and early ’90s, the use of crack cocaine surged."
This isn't some arbitrary cycle - it is a quite predictable progression. A society whose economy is in decay and whoe middle class shrinking rapidly will gravitate to the cheaper drug - meth costs a small fraction of cocaine or heroin.
14
i have become convinced over the years that we might just as well legalize all of it. the war on drugs started by Nixon over 45 years ago has done nothing but create corruption within the police, court systems, politicians and among the public. educate the public, especially the youn,g and permit the victims/users and their families to sue all persons selling the drugs. of course, this requires strict regulations and registration of all sellers, etc and proof that they have assets or insurance to pay for damages. all sellers not properly registered shall be tried and if convicted, shot, hung or otherwise executed. users who buy from a source not registered, etc shall receive mandatory 20 years in jail.
1
WOW! This is old and disturbingly cold news. The opioid pandemic that has been ravaging Appalachia and in articular my adopted state of West Virginia, has been correlated with the horrific home-cooked meth from the very beginning. Users used the meth to function during the day and the OxyContin or heroin to "slow down" at night. It is the meth that is not only more lethal but fries the brain faster. The expanded spread of HIV and Hep C is directly related to the desperate use and reuse of needles irrespective of where found or how filthy because of the methamphetamine compulsion that has ruinously corrupted the brain cells normal functioning. It is heartbreaking to witness the young lives destroyed for the mega-profits of Big Pharma-enabled white collar corporate criminals(too many of them so-called physicians) and black market criminal profiteers. We need to expand treatment options to include the highly effective long term residential centers that have were budget-cut two decades ago and replaced with lifelong cash cow alternative :maintenance" drugs by the drug manufacturers who have raped Appalachia. We need detox centers that actually get people off the poisons that have maimed and killed hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people since the pharmaceutical firms began to market drugs directly to consumers here in the USA, one of only 2 nations in the world to allow DTC, which is a practice condemned by the AMA, but beloved by Wall Street.
7
For 84 years I've lived an active, adventurous, interesting life, and I've never, ever, been around people where drugs of any kind (except alcohol of course!) were available, used, or pushed. As an old fogey, I just don't "get it" why people need drugs to enjoy life. Must be something wrong with me!
Maybe we should consider Portugal - they seem to be doing a pretty good job of at least keeping people from dying from overdose. What we're doing here is not working and we're losing the battle.
21
Unfortunately we have a government that's uninterested in asking (and seeking answers to) the question - what void are people trying to fill with one drug or another?
I'll provide the answer - empty lives. Cure the hopelessness and you'll cure the drug problem - and not before. Instead we get the blame game. How irreducibly pathetic!
How do you strengthen a society? Not by increasing the defense budget but by strengthening the cultural foundations through an ongoing commitment to education. Smarter people make smarter decisions. Smarter decisions lead to better lives. Better lives are the best antidote to the dead end of drug use, abuse, and addiction.
The cupidity and cluelessness of both Congress and the White House reveals itself in the current budget proposal which is blind to those obvious connections.
We're not even treading water. We're sinking fast.
9
Isn't it now clear that the problem is demand, not supply? The focus should be on why such a huge percentage of Americans recklessly use Meth, Opiods and Heroin. It appears that far, far too many people feel they have little to live for. As the income and wealth gaps between the rich and poor grows larger and larger and America becomes an unapologetic oligarchy, things just get worse. No wall will solve this problem, only a better life for the nation's poor.
7
I know I know that the "War On Drugs" is such in incredible revenue stream for so many , in so many ways, LETS CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF. What if we declared way on poverty instead, and instead,watch this drug thing disappear on its on accord.
2
Do not call meth "forgotten" simply because the media hasn't reported on it lately. Most certainly has not been on hiatus, so it's not suddenly "back."
5
They ban but not educate. While I was reading this, the TV station just talked about the recent passed MJ legalization in MA and how to implement it. State government wants caution. The commission keeps talking about "metaphor." While the advocates complain sore loser. But there is little education rollout. The do and don't. When it is legal, it doesn't imply one is allowed to DUI. If people can't figure out the basics, do you expect them to make sense once they are hooked. Especially with meth and heroin?
Drugs and sex, you need education. Not just just-say-no.
1
Drug usage can be linked to depression from poverty. The murder rate in Memphis broke a record in 2016 with poverty the main culprit and guns the weapon. Drug testing for firearm purchases is needed and if ID's are needed for the "right" to vote so should the right to buy or possess firearms, which are used in crimes to obtain drugs. See the connection?
Meth has a history of violent crimes associated with its use for purchases and the subsequent psychotic reactions. Look up the word methamphetamine in a simple dictionary and terms such as psychosis, and schizophrenia comes in to play. Dangerous stuff and a mixture of heroin is one thing, but guns quite another!
8
Maybe we should build a wall?
But, seriously, we can waste our time fighting one substance at a time or we can get serious and deal with addiction. As a society we need to come to terms with economic stress and it's impact on our collective well being.
6
Forgotten? Hardly. One of our civic leaders and restrauneur was murdered (burned to death) by his ex who was high on meth. Someone who use to work for me suffered a massive heart attack at 61 years old-while smoking meth. He spent 1 month in an induced coma and then had to learn how to chew his own food-he died alone. A contractor a few years ago.... Meth is horribly addictive to those who are pre-disposed to addiction.
2
Sadly typical example of the myopia of the NYT.
The scourge of crystal meth never went away in the West. Its been everywhere in the west for the past 20 years, in ever increasing purity and ever lower prices, fed by "superlabs" in Mexico. Many of the same traffickers as heroin and cocaine, using the same "smugglers' turnpike, I-5, to distribute it from San Isidro to Blaine.
2
"In Hawaii, where meth was first introduced in the United States,...."
Meth, like many street drugs, was first introduced by the US pharmaceutical industry and not just to Hawaii. The pharmaceutical version of methamphetamine was called desoxyn, which was marketed back in the 50's as a weight loss drug. At some point in the 60's it moved to the biker culture. I am not sure we can blame meth on some foreign influence "introducing" it to the US, it is pretty much our own American creation.
13
We've have no American health care system. We used to be able to go to a dr or ER whenever needed. We had a state run psychiatric system. All those homeless people you see on the streets used to be in psychiatric hospitals. There were millions of people getting care in psychiatric hospitals. My mother worked in one of them. She didn't have a college degree, but she had a job that paid her a decent salary, gave her health benefits, sick time, vacation time and a pension. In return, she paid taxes to support the psychiatric health care system.
Don't just think of the wellbeing of the former patients. Thinks of all the millions of jobs provided by that heath care system that is gone. Laundries, bakeries, drivers, nurses, aides, social workers, landscapers. All of those jobs produced middle class, taxpaying citizens who paid back into the system. They're gone now. Instead, there are millions of unemployed people who have no future. They're never going to be middle class; they're never going to pay taxes. They'll be depressed people who are a drain on the system. Those are the people who use drugs.
This insane mantra to cut taxes since the 1980s has resulted in the dissolution of an entire health care system, decent infrastructure and the loss of millions of secure jobs that produce taxpaying, middle class citizens.
Big surprise there's a drug crisis among those left homeless and unemployed by a bottom dollar economy.
39
nailed it!
1
It seems more obvious every day that the US is sick. Too many people with no prospects in life, often living in poverty, often poorly educated, many physically ill and self medicating, many more mentally ill and self medicating.
Too many people left behind, education systems underfunded and poorly implemented, horrible mental health system and many still can't access medical care. All the money going to corporations who don't really give it back and supporting our bloated military. Our leaders on both sides don't have the courage to make any real change and the money in politics preserves the status quo or making things worse. I'm sad.
144
Legalize all of it and give it away for free. Gradually increase the toxicity of the free stuff while at the same time eliminate any government support for prevention and recovery. Providing any health care for the users does not have a justifiable return to the taxpayers. Unfortunately, we cannot afford to fight a drug overuse by going after that supply side. Remember, taking this approach during the Prohibition era did not work. However, if more of the demand side of the curve is eliminated the smaller the problem will be. Once the demand side of the curve is gone the supply side will also die off. Very sad, but very true.
4
If we are moving towards a 'survival of the fittest' mentality with 'just let the addicts die and quit being a dependance on us' then we should also eliminate SSI/Disability. Most of those people are lying/faking and find a doctor who is foolish enough to sign off; find a lawyer dim witted enough to believe this 'anxiety/ADHD nonsense and now these people in their 20's are officially disabled - and never have to work or do anything.
I'd rather let these leeches getting SSI starve in the streets and do something for the addicts.
I understand the point you are making however at some time we as a nation are going to have to take a different approach as we have already spent billions of dollars trying to fight the problem and it has only gotten worse. This drug usage problem started in the 30s following the legalization of alcohol and it is very similar to the drug usage in China way back then when Mao had to have the women support him as a significant percentage of the males were already excessive users of opiates, etc. Unfortunately, there is no fixing. We have tried to fight the supply side but that was never where the problem was and there are so many of these damaging products if you were to somehow eliminate one or two like meth and heroine another dozen alternatives would show up to replace them in a very short period of time.
we are arguing about incentives: the current methods are failing. And much money goes south that need not be lost.
1
How can something that never left be back?
14
Let the tweakers destroy their lives. The Big Island is full of tweakers. The tweakers burglarize homes and steal cars to feed their habit. Everyone knows who they are, easy to spot....like parasites begging for money, sleeping in parks...it is abysmal. The justice system is a revolving door down here. They are arrested and freed to go pillage the communities and families who haven't given up. After a few years of this lifestyle their brains are fried and they are a shadow of their former self with little hope of ever being anything more than a taker.
18
Are you saying to let the status quo remain "quo",
or are you trying to make some kind of helpful point ?
1
Requiem for a Dream should be required viewing in high school. If that doesn’t scare you straight.......
13
Politics id the art of the possible. You can't have perfect, but you can try to make things better. I don't know the best policies for dangerous drugs like meth and tobacco, but we sure could be doing better than we are.
4
In which direction have suicide rates been trending since oh, say, January 20, 2017? Those who use deadly drugs are simply taking a slower route. The United States of America is experiencing what is commonly called a nervous breakdown. Is anyone surprised?
23
Stop making this about politics . It's tedious, boring and wrong.
4
Darwin may be put off, but he always wins in the end. If people want to find a way to ruin their lives, they will do so, thereby removing some of the foolish from the breeding pool and raising the quality of the human race.
17
That's cold, mc, ice-cold.
Thou hast the heart of stone.
2
This drug cycle has continued over a century. A drug becomes popular, then the awful consequences like illness and death occur, and drug users move on to the next new drug. The new drug is often an old drug that is not been popular for a generation or so.
As the developer and manager of more than one addiction rehabilitation program, I have seen this cycle more than once. It is well documented by medical historians.
Slowing down them at the crisis by ramping up a methamphetamine crisis is no bargain, for all the reasons this article mentions and more.
We need new approaches in anti-drug education and interdiction.
3
This should have said slowing down the opioid crisis by ramping up a methamphetamine crisis is no bargain.
A few days ago the NYT ran an op-ed titled "Is Loneliness a Health Epidemic?"
America, the country that gave the world Close-Up brilliant smiles and endless TV shows featuring happy, shiny people, is such a land of chronic unhappiness. Loneliness, despair, and yes, anger are plagues on us. We drink, we smoke, we snort, we inject -- and we call these matters "recreational" drugs" but really, how much of it is truly innocuous-sounding "recreational" use -- fun-loving, happy times -- and how much of it is desperate escapism, panic, and self-destruction?
Why are *we* the global leader in these abuses? It cannot be mere wealth; the poor are affected by the scourges as much as if not more than the rich.
Instead of passing a trillion dollar tax cut, I would argue we should take that money to fund a national year off, a year of jubilee as it were, to meet, and talk, and ask ourselves, what is wrong with us?
Why are so many of us so unhappy? Why do so many of us seek escape at any cost?
And meanwhile, another child starts to cry as the parents in the next room get high.
70
also, if the drugs are legal, the provider will have an overwhelming leverage on users, a leverage that even in this country of drawism and ruthless capatalism, might be put to good use. Right now that leverage creates death, crime, and misery.
I see meth vs (specifically) heroin OD stats here, but no mention of fentanyl deaths and stats. Why the omission?
3
Fentanyl is considered an opiate so it would be factored in to the heroin overdoses. The fentanyl is mixed with heroin.
When did it disappear exactly?
4
Ignorance & racism are the leading causes of drug abuse... don't believe me? Just asked a the meth heads and opioid addicts, who so happens to reside in some of the most racist and ignorant communities in America.
3
Lots of hype for the "opioid crisis" and now the "meth crisis." Notice how, even though pot is sold as produce here in the West, as it should be, none of the legions of pot-bust cops have been let go.
2
I told people years ago, the term "war on drugs" was a gigantic mistake. People assume wars will be won. A comparison to the little boy sticking a finger in the hole in the dike was more correct. Or whack a mole. One can only hope to keep the level of lawlessness and death associated with the drug trade to an acceptable societal level. What is wrong with us that we can not make it through the day without a snort, shot or popping a pill?
6
"People assume wars will be won."
WELL, WE AMERICANS MIGHT, BUT
THE OTHER 2 BILLION IN THE WORLD KNOW BETTER.
This TED talk gives an interesting perspective that makes a lot more sense to me than the currently accepted theories on the issue:
www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addict...
I'm reading his book on depression right now and it's quite powerful.
4
Corrected link. https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_abou...
Yes, it is an incredible Ted talk.
Oh I don’t know. That talk is so naive. He makes it seem like there’s no real biochemical addiction. I don’t believe that it’s all about love. My brother committed suicide at age 50. He was an addict, and bipolar. It wasn’t about our family not expressing love. We did nothing but offer him help, love, and support. He just couldn’t overcome the crippling combination of physical addiction and emotional dysfunction. And btw addicts are often frustrating frightening people. Just try all that love stuff when your loved ones start robbing you or abusing you....
1
The drug isn’t the scourge of society. Neither is homelessness.
A scourge is a whip or a lash, not the mark it leaves.
Homelessness and Drugs are the outcome of the scourge.
So is obesity, anorexia, road rage, ranting online, hoarding, and making TV your best friend.
Or living on an island, shooting rockets into outer space, or being the richest person in the world.
The scourge is no sense of belonging.
Apparently, without a sense of belonging, we are too stressed to think clearly.
Fight flight or flee is our mode.
How we cope with that feeling is the mark it leaves: feed it, amp it, suppress it, avoid it, get mad at it, even give up because of it.
Go ahead, be angry at me for pointing this out.
That’s because you too are so stressed, from no sense of belonging, you can not listen.
Look, don’t listen to me, listen to Einstein.
He said you can’t solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that creates it.
So, let’s, you know, create a sense of belonging.
Nope. Not with money or a special place.
Geesh, prisoners of war did it living in cages, using morse code.
They built their resilience.
We could ask 30+ years of SFSU’s CIC grads to replicate the program out in public.
It includes the whole recipe for creating a healthy human.
The first ingredient is a safe base through caring relationships that generates a sense of belonging.
Knowing it’s bad is not a deterrent. Reason isn’t our strength. Feeling is.
So shame is part of the problem, not a solution.
12
Is it mostly a USA problem? Not mostly, I bet.
1
While I could be wrong, it seems that the US is the only country that has such an out of control drug problem. Very similar to how we are the only country with out of control gun violence. I think these point to problems that are deeply rooted in our society. Until we try to better understand why these things are happening in the first place and address the root cause, nothing will get better. We definitely need to better understand mental illness and addiction and treat them as the diseases they are vs viewing people as being weak as that doesn't help anything or anyone.
Also, follow the money trail. The war on drugs is a joke. I'd highly recommend watching the Netflix documentary, How to Make Money Selling Drugs. Then, ask yourself what is one of the biggest differences about the US vs most other countries...we are die hard proponents of capitalism, it's all about the bottom line.
4
Review and evaluate what others countries are doing..do "trials" of these options in various high profile drug cities...evaluate, compare, improve and decide.
If America does not deal with these addictive issues...children in grade schools will become addicts..
The American dream is quickly becoming an American nightmare for millions..
1
What this article fails to mention is how easy it is to cook meth. Meth never went away. It just got put on the back burner of interest when opioids became the topic of the moment. Crack and cocaine are still out there too.
5
The Opioid Epidemic (in my opinion) is being blown way out of proportion. Approximately 115 Americans die every day from Opioids, including heroin (I think they include heroin to blow the statistics higher). 1600 plus die from cancer, 1300 plus die from tobacco related illness (in fact, I'm watching my brother kill himself with cigarettes as we speak). Nobody is saying anything about tobacco. Maybe the Opioid makers need a bigger lobby.
Darwin always wins.
3
We've had Purdue Pharmaceuticals initiate then propel a public health crisis/emergency with its highly addictive opiates. We've seen the result with the current heroin/opiate epidemic once the use of "legal" opiates were curtailed.
We now have a resurgence in Meth use across a good portion of the country.
We have a record amount of people from all walks of life, from Millennials to geriatrics, from Blue staters to Red staters who are increasingly treated for depression, anxiety, and multiple other psychiatric disorders, millions upon millions self-medicating with alcohol, of course legal to purchase in all 50 states.
That is who we are. No family is untouched.
My just turned 25 year old son has been treated for bi-polar disorder. He lives in NYC. Fortunately he is doing well....at the moment. But we pay for his psychiatric treatment out of our own pockets because virtually no reputable NYC psychiatrist takes insurance. Trump and the Republicans just gave trillions of dollars away to the wealthy while seeking to destroy what little is left of our mental health system.
Something is very, very wrong in our country.
43
Well, there was no Purdue Pharmaceuticals to blame for the rise of meth. Face it, people use drugs when they can and then make up a scapegoat to blame for it.
1
availability and standardization of the drugs that are criminal is the only way to stop the deaths. Overdose is most of the time a miscalculation, not an intent to die.
3
Boredom, desperation from lack of viable livelihood choices in a post-industrial/AI-driven world, the need for acceptance even from narcissistic/immature family members/peers . . .
People in both rich & poor societies face these (ex. meth in Duterte's Philippines is called shabu or ice; anyone even remotely suspected of dealing in it gets tragically killed by vigilante squads) - but not every single person recklessly self-medicates w/ non-prescription, DIY or guerilla lab uppers or downers.
Some have the bad luck of having possibly 1 of 18 genetic predisposition markers for meth abuse.
Others possess other types of behavioral/executive function/cognitive health disorder predispositions (ex. anxieties, manic/depressive/schizoid tendencies, learning disabilities that make it hard for an individual to adapt to a rapidly changing job market, etc.) that should be best addressed by a mix of counseling & occupational therapy (individual & group), individualized education and vocational paths, and prescribed medications only (as needed during major life events, not as a lifetime crutch, ideally).
Honestly, we must take too every preventive measure to combat in utero damage to an unborn child - w/c means not raising kids in lead & BPA poisons from tainted water, old homes, outdated food/drink packaging, polluted air, etc., as well parents quitting alcohol, tobacco, & drugs.
Kids w/ hidden pre-birth damage & emulating wrong models can & do fall into fatal self-medication.
5
Very little sympathy for those addicted to the drugs du jour. Are we to expend our limited resources on people who made the initial choice to use drugs and then proceeded to get addicted? They throw away the opportunities that 95% of the world would kill for and choose to live these pointless lives. Let them OD. Clear the decks. Then there won't be customers for the dealers and the addicts won't be around to introduce their friends, family, and even children to the wonders of self-degradation, abuse, homelessness and crime.
10
Seconded, strongly, from California.
2
You sound like The President in the second Kingsman movie, and you know what happened? He got arrested for attempted genocide. Allowing masses of people to OD isn't the answer.
Not everyone is created equal. That's an American Myth. Not everyone has the same opportunities, brain capacities, mental capabilities, etc.
So assuming that some people are just able to avoid addiction without considering environmental and societal factors is a bit uneducated and harsh, honestly.
These people need this stuff to be eliminated all together (let's not even mention how our own government introduced drugs to poor black, communities to begin with) and there needs to be more services offered, recovery, rehab, mental health, life coaching to people that need it in order to get clean and get headed back on track.
Some of these drugs forever damage your brain as well, so some people won't even be capable of recovering tbh.
But by your standards, I guess we should just do away with all handicapped people as well, right? Because hey, they're bleeding the system, right? smdh.
Just because you do not understand how people could become addicted to drugs, doesn't mean they should all die. They are people, too.
7
I'm all for sharing the cost burden of fellow Americans born with leukemia, or congenital heart disease, or Tourettes, or some other challenge that is beyond their control. But raise my taxes to help weak-willed, selfish, and otherwise functioning people who voluntarily abuse recreational drugs to the direct detriment of their health and at the indirect expense of my wallet? If they can self diagnose themselves with depression, they can climb out of their self created problems. All it takes is for the rest of us (sane, considerate people) to stop viewing and treating them as people to be coddled rather than failures to be fixed. If they don't care about their lives why should we? At what point does personal responsibility re-enter the discussion?
2
I imagine that politicians will be scrambling how to scapegoat doctors and Pharma for this drug epidemic too. Any ideas?
To the idea that we should legalize it all so that it can be taken in controlled amounts: yeah, how's that working with Oxycontin and other legal pain killers? It starts with getting it legitimately for a real physical ailment, and soon enough the patient is hooked and either manipulating a doctor to get more (see the excellent recent NY Times essay by a doctor of an addict on this topic - the addict dies at the end) and/or doctor-hopping to get more. And then oops, death happens. Sorry, that's not a solution at all.
11
How did this article get written WITHOUT mentioning the urgent need for new leadership at the CDC? And while meth is not an opioid, Conway sidelining experts and turning the opioid commission into an expensive marketing campaign suggests that any drug crisis faced during the Trump reign will simply pump more people into rehab moneymaker facilities. Trump needs to stop his campaign to make science a dirty word and work with bona fide experts to tackle these deadly scourges.
6
I have no idea how my first comment about the CDC ended up underneath your comment-but I completely agree with your point about legalization! Very well said!
2
The only differences between the damage wrought by alcohol and that wrought by drugs are the peripheral effects of drugs being illegal rather than controlled and sold in bars. I'd venture a guess that the number of deaths and destroyed lives due to alcohol abuse are far greater than that due to drug use.
25
I think - from reading and seeing what a problem meth has been in my hometown rural area - that meth destroys users' minds and bodies much faster than alcohol; with alcohol, often alcoholics get a chance or several chances to rediscover their lives; I've never heard of anyone passing along a success story for a meth head. And meth users who have or are around children - like crack users - are the world's most dangerous parents.
2
...I'd venture a guess that the number of deaths and destroyed lives due to alcohol abuse are far greater than that due to drug use...
-------- tobacco is the #1 killer in america. alcohol is #2 . food (too much GOOD food ) is the #3 killer . all drugs is somewhere down about #268 . . .
1
Soporifix, I'd have to agree with that. More people close to me have died from liver failure, than all other diseases combined. Including my father. Both of my wife's parents also. I'd say nearly all of us, have worked with or know, someone that is killing themselves with alcohol, sometimes, several of your friends and acquaintances simultaneously. Not much is said about it though, here in Central CA, the wine industry is pretty powerful .
What can we do about It? Not much, you can't really tell an adult what to do, most will deny there is a problem, or resist any kind of help.
1
I do not think I have read a group of comments here in the New York Times that had less empathy, compassion or humanity that these comments I read here today. Some of you are completely without heart. Unrealistic ideas, snarky attitudes. Ok lets give free meth out in your neighborhood. Lets see if you sleep so well. Legalize it so it thins out the population, that was a nice idea. Normally I enjoy reading the comments more than the articles. not today.
97
This has been an odd selection - I posted one this morning that did not make the cut, and reading what was posted makes me think the editors are selecting for crazy rants over thoughtful substance.
Indeed, the comments for this article are unnerving.
6
Again, the commenters have lost hope in their own ways as much as the addicts have lost hope in their ways.
Young people with so much promise and potential, destroying themselves in months with meth is a sickening sight that I've seen too much of. How many commenters here who recommend doing nothing, would watch a young person right in front of them, kill themselves without doing something to stop it?
15
Drugs are a never ending battle as the amount of boredom, affluence,(even food debit cards, etc.) infantile parenting, sets people up for doing nothing. but drinking or using other drugs. If there were parents at home who had actually parented, not pampered their kids, and no welfare of any kind, people would have to be working, or at least staying home, and cooking their own food. The more money, the more drugs, obesity, etc. Only a minority of the population has enough self control, and will power to set a responsible attitude towards their habits, and their body.
8
That's an interesting take, considering that the majority of addicts do not come from affluent backgrounds and have not been "pampered." I'm not sure how you square your idea that affluence and pampering are the problem with your idea that welfare is also the problem.
19
Sounds like your narcissism is in full bloom.
Living in a small town for almost 50 years, you observe how people parent, the lack of fathers in the home, children raising themselves, food debit cards, so it sets children up for neediness, and filling it with alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, pop, junk food, playing video games, and not much else in their lives. Somewhere in all the," I need to have my life," people forgot about the children they brought into this world. They need to be nurtured, which is actually a job, and important, if they are going to turn out to be healthy, emotionally, and physically!
2
Another aspect of this tragic situation is that it underscores the weakness, if not, the entire absence of faith in our society. A strong character built upon one's faith in them self, premised on faith in something greater, other than government wards off drug addiction. America's drug addiction is a reflection of weak character and a lack of faith. Thank you.
6
Lol so how do you explain all the “good” Christian kids who are addicted to drugs?
5
Religion is an illness much like drugs.
1
Pray it away....seems to work well in the religious south where heroin addiction is the new coping mechanism for being unemployed and uneducated
1
where are you from? meth has been around forever! this recent spotlight on a long-abused drug is no revelation nor does it speak any new truths. my first meets with tweakers was back n the late 60's when speed destroyed the Summer of Love. it's beeen a mainstay drug bin rural areas 'cause there's nothing else to do - altho' doing nothing at lightspeed seems pretty pointless, and plain 'ol stupid. vet your sources, cub, sounds like you just discovered drugs.
5
Did you read the article?
4
I think we can we agree that the "sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll" mantra is thoroughly dead. The Church Lady is grinning ear to ear.
I don't think we generally think anything's wrong with sex or rock and roll. Republicans are even totally fine with sex nowadays, happy to vote for a serial adulterer.
9
It depends of which drugs are you talking about. Weed and meth are far from the same stuff.
1
How does it compare to that blue meth coming out of the Albuquerque NM area?
12
Clever. Probably whooshed over the heads of all here.
1
Opiod abuse? Meth abuse? Heroin abuse? They are all just symptoms of a deeper more pernicious disease affecting the American psyche. I fear that number of people will just have to be written off because they don't want to be clean.
12
Billions and billions over many decades spent and many many lives lost to the criminal element all so we stop people who want to get high from getting high.
Prohibition as in booze or drugs has never worked. Yet we spend billions if not trillions trying.
Gut the cartels overnight. Gut the US drug gangs over night. Cut out the criminal element.
Provide safe medical staffed clinics where junkies and addicts can use US govt provided drugs safely.
The war on drugs has been a giant failure and spending trillions more is not going to change that
47
I don’t think you can use the words “safe” and “methamphetamine” in the same sentence—there is no safe way for humans to use meth, even in a clean medical clinic staffed by doctors and nurses. Speed kills.
1
The environment where the addict uses is safe.
Unlike the streets. There are medical people and addiction professionals on hand, a wide range of public health professionals and referrals are available, std and HIV testing can be there for those that want. Child services and referrals.
Are the additive drugs they are taking safe ? Good heavens no.
It's a more humane approach, it would be billions cheaper, and it would take a giant bite out of organized crime.
Organized crime, cartels, US drug gangs are the biggest supporters of prohibition and the war on drugs that you will find.
1
What an interesting variety of comments, but only totaling 50 by midday of release. Low numbers for an important subject. The comments about Americans' desire to alter their states of being reminds me: WHAT ABOUT ALCOHOL, FOLKS? People have wanted to alter their states for eons. We have come to embrace the drug "alcohol" as an acceptable form of inebriation. I'm not condoning or disputing any of the drug uses. My 2 cents: a government that educates and empowers its people brings success to its people, all the way around. Sadly, our country isn't interested in this fundamental seed.
25
Agreed. If our government spent more time educating its citizens, we wouldn’t have that disastrous orange blob in the White House.
1
I didn't vote for our current president, but a great many concerned and well educated conservatives did. Insulting half the country is divisive and the reason it's so difficult to come to bi-partisan solutions.
He won. Learn something about why. You may well still disagree, but at least you will have learned something about your fellow citizens.
1
As someone who works in mental health in San Francisco, I would contend that methamphetamine use is plausibly responsible for as many if not more drug-related crimes, episodes of violence, and trips to the emergency room than any other substance (discounting all of our daiy opiate overdoses). Prolonged meth use is typically accompanied by episodes of hyper-arousal, sleeplessness, the dismantling of old handheld calculators, etc. If taken in relatively large quantities over relatively long periods of time, meth first overloads and then eventually disables the dopamine system in the brain. Which, of course, is not good. Meth also exacerbates any pre-existing psychosis or induces psychosis altogether (fun for the whole family!) Frequent users often report they hear voices, see "shadow figures," experience severe paranoia, and endorse full-blown psychotic delusions. When you couple these sorts of psychotic symptoms with frequently hyper-aggressive and/or hypersexual behavior while intoxicated, you have a real public health problem. Our local police department, however, does not seem overly concerned. But don't mistake SFPD's laxness for a lack of gravity: Meth is a grim and wicked beast. Its serpentine poisoning of the brain urges otherwise ordinary people to become semi-aware fragments of themselves, utterly hellbent on arousing and satisfying the darker, more nihilistic impulses that have always accompanied humankind.
371
Thank you for that eloquent description of the effects of methamphetamine on humans, and thank you for the work that you do.
8
THANK YOU! Perfectly said!!!
4
Perhaps meth could help explain the alt-right.
8
and the beat goes on . . .
Greedy, clueless DC plans military parades while the more damage is being done by rundown neighborhoods, poverty, job loss. How about a parade to announce all hands on deck for our kids to receive a world-class education?
24
I have lost all sympathy for those who can't function in life without opioids or meth or other drugs. We all have our problems/demons. There has always been poverty. There has always been inequality of income and standard of living. But even in times when these things have been far more profound than today, most people did not need to either be anesthetized or high as a kite.
What has changed? The total breakdown of the American family. Parents today are far more focused on their OWN needs, than those of their children. At the opposite end, are the helicopter parents who try to remove every single little pebble that might be impeding the success of there little snow flakes. We have a lot of people who are totally unable to cope with stress of any kind.
Surely, our dollars can be better spent elsewhere. If these people want to kill themselves this way, just let them do so.
16
Not to mention the terrible AMERICAN diet that depletes our brain of any feel good chemicals.
I really don’t see an end in sight as we bury our faces in cell phones and spread our ignorance globally.
1
I'm sorry that you feel this way. However, it's this type of thinking that only perpetuates the problem. Judge not lest you be judged, I remind myself of this daily as I see a lot of addicts in Seattle, and it's hard to be sympathetic sometimes. But, we are all human, and I believe we should all be in this together. We should treat others the way we would want to be treated, and I don't know what brought any number of the addicts I see to their current state. Unless you've walked a mile in someone else's shoes, you don't really know what is going on. The problem isn't the breakdown of a family or how one chooses to parent, the problem is that our society, as a whole, is pretty self centered. We value someone's wealth, job title and looks over their character and contribution to society, when it should be the other way around.
5
Actually, that isn't true. What is new is criminalizing it. Housewives were picking up heroin, made by Bayer, at the pharmacy, in the 1800's. Coca Cola used to be made of cocaine. I think the Babylon's invented alcohol.
I'm going to go get some coffee now.
3
Problems begin at home. Americans love getting high, so anything to get that push. I guess after that it is a process of natural selection, but the chemical composition of these compounds is against human longevity, so once someone steps onto the slippery slope, it's a matter of time.
6
Thank you for covering this important story. With all the focus on opioid addictions and deaths, meth addiction has not received any news coverage at all. Please look into some of the excellent treatment research going on right now. Pharmacology researchers at the University of Kentucky, for example, are developing novel therapies for meth addiction right now. These are in early trials. I hope you will do some follow-up stories that look at therapeutic options.
14
We need drugs to fuel Netflix and network series.
3
To make them or watch them? To make them, coffee will do. Coffee was a pretty woke moment when it hit Western civilization in the 1600's. Thousands of coffee houses opened all around London. Newton figured out gravity, Ben Franklin came up with the post office, shucks, newspapers came out of that coffee movement. So did the stock market, insurance, and even the whole idea of having an office.
I think we could steal a page from 1600's London. Let's use coffee shops to help us counter the scourge of no sense of belonging that grips our culture, which is clearly in crisis. There are 30+ years of SFSU students who internalized a resilience building process that generates a sense of belonging, builds critical thinking skills, and even drives volunteering. Let's call out those folks and ask them to show up at our coffee shops and set up community involvement circles. You wanna make America great? This will work. You wanna save the polar bears. Great. Let's figure it all out. Together. In groups of 4-10. Like little troops, we can build an army of care.
Por Que No?
2
We spend 700 billion a year on our military lets put them to work. Let them earn the terrible drain they are on our federal budget. What good are they if we rot from within. What good is all the defense spending if we fall apart from within.
24
What is it you imagine they are doing now - sitting around? If you think you can stop drugs from coming in when people want them, you are dreaming.
3
Here in Seattle, drugs are openly sold on 3rd avenue downtown in what is called on the street, The Open Air Market. The police do little if anything to discourage it.
I remember waiting for a bus one day and see 4, count them, 4 officers turn their heads the other way as people pulled out their little bags of powder and did them.
One day last summer, they did a sweep of this little area for publicity and the tourists. But I rode the bus the following Monday and heard several people in the back of the bus talk about how they had been picked up, taken to holding for the weekend, and then put back on the street. They were stunned that they didnt even go to court. One gal had several warrants and they still dumped her back on the street. That is pretty much just sitting around doing nothing.
That's right. We military members have just been sitting around doing nothing for years. It's about time we got to work!
Why doesn't the US Government has an agreement with the Latin Governments like Mexico and others to allow American Special Ops Teams to go in and take out the Cartels with their Special Teams supporting us OR allowing us to do it on our own. If they don't want to do that; imprison any Foreign National caught smuggling hard drugs in to USA for Life Without Parole. It may NOT eliminate the scurge completely but will put a significant dent for sure. Also any local drug pusher caught the first time irrespective of the amount goes to jail for a minimum of ten years. The second time for Twenty years wtih No Time Off for good behavior. Start locking up the Drugees on the street and release them only after they have cleaned the drug out of their system. Keep repeating and they will realize that they need to give up or they will not only NOT get the drugs but will be in jail. Ofcourse, the ACLU will fight tooth and nail. But which is preferred? Being Democratically Correct or DEAD.
3
1. "Taking out" the cartels is vastly more difficult than you suggest. It's on par with trying to "take out" Muslim extremists in places like Afghanistan and Syria, and we've all seen how badly those operations have turned out.
2. It would be unconstitutional to punish foreign nationals differently than American citizens who commit the same crimes. "Equality under the law" applies to *everyone* who breaks laws on American soil.
3. It's been proven time and time again that the threat of long prison sentences is not a deterrent against committing crimes. Locking up first-time offenders for five years would a) fix nothing and b) serve as a significant injustice, considering many "first-time" rapists and persons convicted of manslaughter generally receive lesser sentences than that.
4. We already tried "locking up all the 'Drugees' [sp]." Didn't work one bit, but it sure wasted billions of dollars in the process. (On top of the fact that jailing people who'd be far better served with drug-treatment programs doesn't work, either.) Btw do you think should we lock up alcoholics, too? Booze is considerably more dangerous when abused than many drugs, though admittedly not meth or opioids.
13
What a great idea lets unleash our military and send them into another country all locked and loaded.
Why don't we legalize or Medicalize and let those who want to smoke themselves to death do so? Or get help if they want it.
Save many billions in tax dollars and many lives of those on our small teams who will not be killed in some cartel shootout.
So far after decades the war on drugs makes the prohibition of booze look like a great idea
4
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
1
I find it interesting that with all the illegal drug use reporting, meth is generally overlooked. And yet, here it is, huge. With meth there's nothing like methadone. From what I have learned when heavy meth uses stop taking it, all they do is sleep a lot more. However, the emotional deadness that follows can last for a year or more. There are no treatment options for meth uses in NYC (or probably anywhere, I guess), as there are for heroin uses. Also, there is a legal form of meth, desoxyn, a time release capsule which has been available for decades. But meth, apart from Breaking Bad, is not sexy. There are no meth uses nodding on street corners or tragic stories of death.
Also, among the bad drugs around, the Times should report on GHB, called G on the street. Apparently it makes you feel drunk and probably happy but the dosage amounts are so tiny it is easy to overdose and overdosing can lead to death. A doctor at Roosevelt Hospital (Mt. Sinai West) told me he sees 2-3 G deaths a week. Who knew?
7
A lot of these things are regional. I have not heard of G in close to twenty years here in Seattle. It used to be quite popular in the clubs on a Friday night.
People currently like to bash LA for its homeless "problem" but I can't tell you the feeling of utter desolation I'd feel while living in Downtown Saint Louis and driving across the river to Southern Illinois, then known then as the "meth capitial" of the country. Empty factories, graffitied buildings, and burned-down lots everywhere while their drug-addicted homeless found their way back across the river to the bleak homeless shelters near where I lived. At least LA is in a state that's trying to do the scientific thing to address the problem and raising the taxes needed to get it done, while Missouri wallows in its red state, "pray it away" misery saying, "tax cuts will solve everything".
334
Seriously? Are you unaware that California has BY FAR the largest number of drug- and alcohol-addicted homeless in the U.S.? Drive around Skid Row one night if you're somehow skeptical of this fact - and consider the fact that "Skid Row" is the *literal* name of the section of downtown L.A. with homeless encampments, given the 40+ years it's served as a home for chronic alcoholics and drug abusers.
I'll believe California is *actually* doing something about its homelessness problem when I see it.
4
Ditto for New York City. When foreign tourists tell me that there are so many homeless here, I explain that this ain't nothin' compared to ___________________ (fill in the blank with the name of virtually any red-state city).
5
Source?
America is addicted to drugs? Why? As far as I am concerned this addiction starts with weed, and as the high provided by weed is no longer satisfying, then the user moves to stronger drugs. Boy, I am glad I am not addicted to weed, meth, opiates, herion. I have more respect for myself. Thank you.
3
Where does alcohol fall into the picture in terms of being a “gateway” drug? This country has always had a lot of alcohol abusers and full blown alcoholics. When I was growing up, kids that went on to abuse any other kind of drug started with alcohol. Not everyone who drinks moves onto hard drugs nor does everyone who smokes marijuana.
8
You are flat out wrong. There is no, repeat NO research which shows that marijuana leads to addiction. In fact, recent work has connected decreased opioid deaths with mj legalization. One of these things (marijuana) is not like these others(meth, heroin, fentanyl, oxy).
49
Weed has nothing to do with it. There are cannabis users in all levels of society who are just fine with it for the occasional high, just like a glass of wine, and aren't searching for "stronger drugs". They're self-respecting occasional users who are successfully running businesses, raising children, and more. Do you have an occasional beer? Cannabis is on the same level and to call it a "gateway drug" but not also alcohol and tobacco is utter foolishness. I hear many hard drug users started out drinking alcohol as teens but are you calling for your occasional beer to be banned? Please check the stereotypes and self-righteous privileged claims. This is about mental health and quite possibly DNA, not moral turpitude.
13
No amount of money is going to stop people who are addicted to drugs from killing themselves. Hate to say this but we are overspending (and over hyping in the media) on a very small percentage of the population who have no goal or intention of ending their habit. There may be those few who stop but will always remain being addicted. The rest are committing mass suicide in slow motion.
27
Seems like we've been trying to ban and outlaw substances just about forever and it doesn't seem to help anyone and costs the earth in the bargain.
A better and far cheaper option (than more prisons, law enforcement armies and reactionary health bureaucracies) exists. It's known as the Four Pillars –Harm reduction; Prevention; Treatment; Enforcement.
116
Your argument is full of flaws. Before we will ever consider something like harm reduction or treatment, we have to care about these people as human beings. There is not much reason to believe much of the population ever will.
My 19-year-old son, a part-time college student, died of a meth overdose on September 11, 2005. He had been in a sophisticated residential high school rehab program for more than a year, and did "well" in it but then graduated at 18 and went on to college -- and relapse. The signs were unmistakable for years that he was at risk. Many factors could be said to have contributed, but one key factor was a longstanding laissez-faire notion of some people very close to him who encouraged a no-big-deal attitude. Marijuana was his gateway drug, then cocaine, then meth. My perception is that the general attitude of the libertarian libertines comes with a very high and deathly risk of death for a disturbing number of people. My guess also is that the recreational dope-smoking craze will tend to exacerbate the problems. Recreational drug use is problematic. We are schizophrenic as a nation, worried about the opioid epidemic on one hand while rushing into easy marijuana like a bunch of dopes on the other. Sessions and Trump are right to be skeptical about marijuana licentiousness so long as Congress continues to regulate it as a controlled substance. Let's see what the experimenting states show after a few years of open recreational marijuana use, and see whether there is a relationship in those states with higher death rates from opioids, meth and the like. I'm betting that there will be a correlation, and that we will be inclined to back off the state experiments.
12
It is not about marijuana. Since the dawn of time, human beings have sought to use substances to numb themselves, alter their consciousness, or both. Alcohol being one of them.
So this is not about pointing a finger at marijuana, but a reflection of basic human behavior. And trying to legislate that has proven to be impossible. Attention needs to be paid to education and harm reduction.
Spending money and energy in trying to combat the supply of recreational drugs is a complete waste of time and resources. Look at the history of the DEA's efforts. They've come to nil. So it's time to reassess our understanding and attitude about this issue.
17
Actually, the data that has come in so far has shown that in states that have legalized marijuana, the use of opioids has plummeted. Sorry to burst your bubble.
20
Dear Dave Oedel,
My condolences about your son, that's a terrible thing to go through, and I hope you manage to overcome your grief.
However, I believe marijuana and opiods are not the same thing at all. I think the outcome of legalizing marijuana will be that more people will not turn from it to stronger drugs, because weed will be legal and easily procured, and weed cannot kill people. Everyone I know who has smoked weed, including me, never really got into anything stronger.
So I'd bet that in the states with legalized recreational weed, deaths from opiods and meth will drop after an adjustment period. Further, I'd think if we legalized use of opiods and meth, it would be easier for people to get treated and break the addiction. With the substances illegal, people keep it as secret as they can, and don't feel like they can get help.
9
In. 2001 Portugal decriminalized ALL drugs. Drug use since then has not skyrocketed-it has in fact slightly declined. Curing substance abuse is a very complex and difficult and vital project in public health and Medicine. What decriminalization DOES do however, is to greatly diminish the crime and other associated social pathology associated with drug addiction. It makes it possible for the rest of us to walk down the streets safely at night. It improves the overall quality of life for society as a whole. And rather that drive users underground, it makes them more available for treatment and rehabilitation.
Sessions hates the idea of decriminalization- and so do the cartels. They will work hand-in-hand (as it were) to prevent it. But it would be a major step toward a saner, less violent society.
249
I recall reading about Portugal's 10 year anniversary of their new drug policy, de= criminalization and treatment centers, and it was a positive result, with less drug use than before. This did not make the TV cable news at all.
Let's look at other advanced countries and discuss their systems pro/con. Do same with their health care for all, and their sensible gun control laws. Millions in the US live in poverty, or insecurity, and our economic mobility index is behind other democracies. This are factors that affect drug use and treatment.
2
I disagree on only one point. A recent report I saw actually show not a 'slight' decrease in drug abuse, but a significant reduction.
2
After a few thousand years of exposure 80-90% of Western humans can get through life without becoming alcoholics, and many alcoholics function nearly normally. I suppose the same selection process may work with other stuff.
20
If these drugs were legal and available over the counter (like alcohol and tobacco) there would be few overdose deaths because the potency would be controlled. Most overdoses aren't deliberate suicides: they are the result of an addict taking an unexpectedly potent dose.
44
I'm for the legal use and sin tax on alcohol. tpbacco and marijuana. BUT the continued use of meth (even if it were regulated and sold legally) is far more damaging to the body and brain. Rehab and treatment: yes. Legalization: no.
7
Well, it is illegal. That isn't the answer. It's making it so people are not very excited about becoming police though.
1
Like Oxycontin?
Speed kills? Who knew????
4
You can buy all the ingredients legally and make it at home.
Where access to the ingredients has been restricted, production has decreased.
It's not rocket science.
6
Well, meth certainly isn't going to help the opioid epidemic. It's an ugly drug, and when a tweaker hits the manic, paranoid stage, dangerous for the rest of humanity. Will this lead to more sub-standard pop-up rehab centers? Bleed the rest of society with the lies and thefts and crime and danger on the streets, bleed our insurance system? Sometimes I think the answer is letting it go -- just let it go and thin the ranks. I say that as a burned relative of a meth addict, who frankly isn't worth a nickel.
63
the drug problem will not be adequately addressed until we have an adequate system that can provide treatment to people with mental health issues and get education (including apprenticeships that are worth something) and other job type training programs that give people real jobs. will this fix everything....no....but despair due to lack of prospects in areas and untreated mental health issues I suspect would put a major dent in demand.
unfortunately, these are hard things to implement, we would much rather continue to pour money into our military which will continue to pour money into propping up corrupt and failed nation states who turn around and steal huge amounts of money for their own bank accounts instead of investing in our people and our country........just saying....I do not propose leaving the military holding the bag, they do good work and need resources but there has been nothing wise about the spending over the last decade or so, meanwhile we continue to say we can't do anything for our own.
118
"..there has been nothing wise about the (military) spending" and I would add and nothing wise about the waste in the military and the fact that they have never had a success audit. Why throw more money at them when they can't be accountable and transparent about the funds they have already received?
Americans are dying at home hourly while we invest in killing people over seas and civilians too.
3
One way to pay for treatment? I would like to see all drugs legalized. It's the best answer. It wont happen though, way to many forces against the sanest solution.
1
Welcome to the new neo-liberal diseases -- this is what happens when the corporate world gets socialism and government guarantees, but the peons get the free market.
63
Exactly right.
What never gets mentioned ii that meth was once widely prescribed in diet pills. It was the 70's as I recall. Since then it has only increased.
22
No, I believe you're thinking of amphetamine, which is entirely different -- and vastly less dangerous -- than methamphetamine. You're correct that drugs like Dexedrine were once available over-the-counter as "diet pills," though they were more commonly used by college kids for late-night cramming sessions.
Amphetamine is not only still legal today (albeit via prescription), it's commonly sold today as well, as a treatment for ADHD. Adderall is quite literally a brand-name version of it. While yes, it can absolutely be abused, it's nonetheless not even in the same ballpark as meth; comparing the two is roughly akin to comparing Tylenol 3 (acetaminophen with codeine) to illicitly sold OxyContin.
13
Frontline did an excellent episode about meth years ago, in partnership with an Oregon newspaper. The US missed its best chance to severely curtail the spread of meth but misinformed politicians Chris chose not to. it's a travesty.
6
Deep within the article there's an important indicator of why this meth thing isn't that important. In Oregon, 232 people died from meth overdose in 2016. Oregon has a population of 4 million, so 232 people is basically insignificant. There are far more deaths from guns, cars, and accidental falls in the bathtub.
Also, even if the deaths in one state from meth overdose reached tens of thousands (nearly inconceivable really), it would not be too important. First, the number one problem on earth is too many humans; all early deaths of humans are helpful with this problem, and the meth deaths are unfortunate in that they're not nearly enough to be helpful.
Second, everyone who dies from meth chose to use it. They opted out of real life for drugged oblivion, as a segment of humanity has always done. Sorry but I don't have sympathy for such people. Far more people opt out with alcohol, but it takes them longer to die and their deaths are less noticeable. We don't do anything about alcohol because we've realized we can't. It will be producible and there will be people who get addicted to it and die, same as meth.
So, in my opinion, this isn't a problem that needs much attention. If we want to get rid of side effects like strengthening Mexican drug cartels, then we should legalize it. Regardless, easily addicted people will die from their addictions, same as it has been for millennia.
73
You have a point, Dan. "...easily addicted people will die from their addictions, same as it has been for millennia."
We are now implored to view drug addiction as a disease and our current national struggle with it as an epidemic. Our tools in fighting this disease seem to be largely ineffective. Mosquito nets fight malaria, but no one wants malaria. Addicts tend to either hold on to or relapse into their disease. The folks committed to working with addicts will evade giving you the real statistics, which are grim.
Epidemics and pandemics have historically burned through populations until the most vulnerable were taken out of the mix and the scourge fell back. If this is truly a disease, why not let nature take its course? Harsh? Yes, but how many of us have seen addicts destroy their friends and families without a moment's hesitation. Love and loyalty have ceased to exist for them.
In our seemingly humane attempts to confront and manage the problem, we are supporting it and with the advent of "injection sites" in major cities we may even be suggesting it as a viable life choice. Is this the civilization we want?
3
Wow, brutal but intellectually valid argument. I'm always of two minds in these types of situations. My heart has deep compassion for these users and anger towards the American system that approaches the problem as crime versus mental illness. My brain, though, can see it more along the way you do. It really is, so sadly, evolution at work and lovers of science just can't escape the facts, even when they're heartbreaking.
11
"In Oregon, 232 people died from meth overdose in 2016. Oregon has a population of 4 million, so 232 people is basically insignificant."
That's not too far akin from arguing that "the New York City metro area has a population of over 20 million, so the 3,000 who died on 9/11 are basically insignificant."
Your lack of empathy is astounding - and it's clear you've never had the misfortune of knowing a friend or loved one who's ended up addicted to drugs or alcohol. Yes, people "choose" to use drugs. People "choose" to use cigarettes, too - are you equally as dismissive of tobacco? (which is just as addictive as meth, and kills many, MANY more millions per year) I'd suggest taking a look at the glass house you're inside and quit throwing stones at the walls.
4
There is no down side for the dealers, and we have a porous wall with Mexico. How much longer can this be tolerated??
My father was a NYC detective and 50 years ago, he suggested that dealers should go before a firing squad. Once a few are shot, dealing will then have real negative consequences!
My modification is to shoot one out of five convicted dealers, based on a lottery. Do it live at 2 AM on Cable. Take a long camera shot, so it is clear what happened, but is not so close that it is really gruesome. Many current TV shows are more graphic.
Increase the odds of "winning" the lottery, if needed.
I raised two sons by myself, and I was lucky, (but also watched them like a hawk!). I think addicting young people for profit can no longer be dealt with on such casual and expensive basis.
How many billions have We the People spent for the "war on drugs," A lot of fat salaries and big pensions paid in the 50 years since my dad's observations.
It only get's worse and worse, and of course, 'let's hire more "law enforcement."'
3
Disagree with the idea of executing drug dealers unless they are personally tying down their customers and injecting them. Otherwise they are only meeting a demand.
11
Why don't we use drones on the cartels? It's the equal of an invasion of U.S. territory. I mean, we use them on Afghan and Pakistan terrorists who actually pose little threat to the U.S. USG is highly unimaginative. We wait until the stuff gets into the country, then try to find it. Duh! So reactive...!
8
Dear Tom,
Easy answer to that one really. The cartels are very difficult to distinguish from civilians, so if we launch hellfire missiles at people we think are smugglers, we'll be hitting Mexican and U.S. civilians. We're fine about slaying thousands of Syrian and Iraqi civilians, but it's not as politically easy to cut down a batch of U.S. civilians.
8
"Why don't we use drones on the cartels? It's the equal of an invasion of U.S. territory."
That's not even remotely true (in a legal sense), plus the U.S. has spent countless billions over the past 35 years fighting an entirely fruitless "war on drugs." As this and many other articles have pointed out, this "war" has not only been an absolute failure; illicit drugs are now cheaper and stronger than ever before.
It also ignores the reality that the cartels have been adept at evading discovery for decades now. Meth doesn't even need to be cultivated outdoors, as is the case for drugs like cocaine; it can be manufactured inside basically any indoor facility. Further, very much *unlike* our drone strikes in places like Afghanistan, we have very few reliable sources of intel within the higher ranks of any of the major cartels.
Finally, it's not an exaggeration to say that the cartels earn billions per year making illegal drugs. Destroying a handful of meth labs -- and note that they likely have hundreds of them throughout Central American -- would have virtually no financial impact on them (but would certainly kill the impoverished locals who work in such places because they have few, if any, other options), and the cartels could simply open up shop elsewhere within a matter of weeks.
5
Plus, that would put the carnage, with its inevitable outflow of refugees, right next door to us. Can't have that.
1
I lived in Portland, OR, during the meth outbreak of the mid 90s. It was absolutely brutal. You can outlaw whatever you want - make cold medicine more difficult to get, etc. But the problem is that a good section of our population wants to anesthetize itself. Meth, fast food, & Netflix is the new bread and circus.
394
Netflix isn't so bad!
43
Yes, but why? Why does such a sizeable portion of the population want to anesthesize itself, and anesthesize itself to death or at least beyond what is traditionally procured by cultures in terms of wine or beer etc? Why are people so unhappy?
France (with chronic high unemployment) used to be one of the largest consumers of antidepressants per capita in OECD countries, which apparently is no longer the case (Iceland and other Scandinavian countries come first) and French people also now drink less.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/health_glance-2017-graph181-en
3
It's too limited: I quickly exhausted everything I was interested in. Where are all the good movies that I know exist?
2
In the late 1980s and early 1990s we had a crack cocaine epidemic. The government responded with a two-pronged approach: A law enforcement crackdown with heavy sentences for crack dealers, and money for treatment programs that were mostly abstinence-based. The crack cocaine epidemic is gone. Today, politically correct pundits claim the law enforcement crackdown of the 1980s was racism (see Ava Duvernay's bizarre yet lauded film "13") and that abstinence-based programs don't work (despite 80 years of success of AA). I guess facts and evidence just don't beat political correctness.
26
That crackdown (aka The War on Drugs) devastated so many communities, ripping families apart and ballooning the population of non-violent offenders in our jails and prisons, the impacts of which we are still reeling from today. What you propose, an iron-fisted, punitive approach, doesn't work, either.
6
Oh please! The crack cocaine crackdown was totally racist in that law enforcement went after it and its minority users while my rich high-flying classmates at USC bound for law school, Silicon Valley, or lives of family wealth were partying in mountains of powdered cocaine, unmolested by law enforcement. It was everywhere in the 80s. I even had a brief fling with a gorgeous CHP officer from the Malibu division (I swear, real-life "CHiPs"!) who did not arrest anyone as we walked into one party but, instead, did a line himself "just to be sociable" (I myself can't stand the feeling of anything, be it water or coke, going up my nose).
Can't tell you how many parties and clubs I'd walk into and see a white pile somewhere therein surrounded by white partiers. It's not "politically correct" to note the drug type, the race of its users, and the proportion of law enforcement attention applied. It's the FACT. I was there in the 80s and even as the racially white girl I am, I could totally see that white powder users were given a routine pass to free up resources to go after black crack users. As the crackdowns heated up, I'd count my lucky stars that I happened to be a white girl because I knew I'd never be hassled about drugs by cops but instead asked out for a date, as happened that night, decades before "me too", I was speeding on Pacific Coast Highway.
27
The success rate of AA is 12%
13
An important article that highlights the danger of viewing the growing addiction crisis too substance-centric. The focus on one type of addictive substances (currently: opiates) avoids dealing with the overall challenge of addictive behaviors that underlie the using. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try our outmost to reduce the number of deaths by opiate overdose, but approaches that are more emcompassing of addiction in general are badly needed, or we'll continue playing whack-a-mole.
Also, the companies and countries that supply the precursors (e.g. phenylpropanone) to the more industrial-scale meth cooking deserve intense scrutiny - this is an area where the US can and should throw its weight around.
Unfortunately related, the article also highlights one much underreported aspect of deaths by overdose: A sizeable majority of - for example - heroin overdose victims died from combinations of heroin with other substances, especially benzodiazepines (benzos). Benzos amplify opiate toxicity (and can be lethal themselves). The combination of methamphetamine with heroin (a cheaper version of the heroin-cocaine speedball) mentioned in the article is worrisome, as it poses yet another challenge for first responders and emergency medicine. It would be helpful to learn more about the experiences of those professionals dealing with those who use (and die) of such combinations.
2
Instead of pouring billions of dollars into a wall, the money should be used for treatment centers and other means to help the addicted...there is blame on both sides here, you can't have supply without the demand.
16
So now that it doesn't make a difference anymore, can I buy pseudoephedrine without feeling like a criminal? Let's face it, drug addicts want to be drug addicts and there is little anyone can do to change that. Most of the opioid addicts did not start with legitimate prescriptions, they got the drugs by pretending they needed them. People who want meth will get it when they want. All the expensive so-called treatments have not done much to decrease addiction because people will not stop until they decide they are ready which may be never.
We now have a situation where people who legitimately need painkillers cannot get enough because some people are addicts. My name is in a database like some criminal because occasionally I get a cold bad enough to need to use pseudoephedrine for a few days. Let's go back to the old idea about addiction. These people are criminals; lock them up.
59
If only it were so easy. Or, possibly, if only your parents or children were addicts, you may see how blatantly your ignorance is showing when you say this one declarative sentence: Drug addicts want to be drug addicts.
As for you possibly feeling like a criminal because it takes 5 minutes longer to buy pseudoephedrine, well, that seems like a whole different issue...
14
All the opioid addicts I know of did start with legit prescriptions...lock up the doctors who are over prescribing.
5
Clearly, you do not understand addiction. Addicts are not criminals.
10
Last night at an opioid forum at our middle school, the officer giving the speech stated, “we have to stop looking at the behavior and ask what is driving behavior” . If the US is going to move beyond the never ending crisis, we need to start being honest with ourselves. The ultimate driver is a breakdown of the family unit.
I don’t know how you fix that.
202
This is an ignorant, cruel, and factually incorrect statement. I know many devoted, long-married parents whose children have nevertheless been consumed by drug addiction. Let's not add to their pain and desperation by blaming them for the tragedy of disease and death that addiction brings to everyone it touches.
193
Each year, some area of the US government, under Democrats as well as Republicans, expands its powers greatly because it's all about the money. Private contractors with ties to politicians in both parties get rich this way. In the US, we don't create or expand government department to try to solve a problem. We create or expand a government department to make our friends more money.
8
Broad and generous social support systems, which this country is loathe to provide. We do almost nothing of real value to support families and individuals in need in this country.
29
"The scourge of crystal meth, with its exploding labs and ruinous effect on teeth and skin, has been all but forgotten amid national concern over the opioid crisis."
According to whom? The writer did very little research. "Meth" certainly hasn't been forgotten by local law enforcement agencies who constantly arrest meth addicts and shut down Meth Labs in my area of California. The weak data and reporting reads like a Wikipedia search. This writer's Bio provides zero evidence of having ever specialized on this topic.
29
You can order Fentanyl online from China and ship it to yourself in the U.S via the US Postal Service because the US Postal Service isn't required by CONGRESS to track the contents of international packages the way private mail carriers like UPS have to.
4
Here in the midwest, it definitely seems as if the news has abandoned its stories about meth labs and ramped up stories about opioid addiction.
“But where there is a void,” he added, “someone fills it.”
And that's why the War on (some) Drugs has been and always will be an expensive failure. Looking for a criminal law solution to a public health problem doesn't work, wastes resources, and needlessly ruins lives.
But it makes for good political posturing and it enriches various constituencies, so it's not going to change anytime soon.
255
Lovely photo of a guy shooting up. Way to glorify it.
4
I'd hardly call that picture a glorification. Anyone willing to inject drugs is going to do so for reasons other than seeing a picture of it. Focus on the actual
issue.
20
"And, there are fewer tools to combat meth than to combat opioids: There is nothing like Naloxone, which can reverse opioid overdoses, or methadone, which can stem opioid cravings."
A statement that manages to be both completely true and utterly meaningless.
There is no Naloxone for meth because one does not overdose on meth the way one does on opioids: A fatal meth overdose is almost always the result of a catastrophic failure of some bodily system as the result of physiological changes brought on by stimulant use. Opioids, on the other hand directly suppress respiratory and cardiovascular functions; they are a causative, rather than a contributory factor. A Naloxone for meth would somehow have to reverse catastrophic organ failure brought on by heatstroke while at the same time repairing cerebral strokes and hemorrhages.
Along the same lines, there is no methadone for meth because meth is not addictive in the same way as heroin or, indeed, methadone. While there may be strong psychological dependency and cravings, there is no degree of physical addiction anywhere comparable to the body's reliance upon an opioid or alcohol.
While Naloxone has been nothing short of miraculous in its impact on the user community, this country's reliance on methadone seems predicated as much on maintaining the income of a small group of licensed providers than on ending addiction and facilitating the re-entrance of users into regular society.
8
Could it be time to back up and take a different look, and maybe as a result ,a different approach to what is referred to as , " Drug Abuse ." Perhaps there is a segment of any population that is addictive . And not unlike Diabetes , can be managed , not cured. Suppose the kabillions of dollars spent to fight could be used to mange the people so affected.
313
Spoken in the age of Trump, where the awful and the outrageous are normalized. If we normalize drug use, do we let "managed" drug abusers teach in our schools? Run for office? Manage the treasury? Babysit? Become a doctor...?
6
i went to school in the early 70's and i learned in economics 101 to expect 10% of any workforce to be stoned or drinking..over the years i have not heard the number changing much over all .
2
You’re correct Dr. The problem with any drug isn’t supply, it’s demand. A better understanding of how to identify and treat addicts would work better. I’m a recovering alcoholic and opioid user. I’m responsible for staying sober, but it wouldn’t have been possible without support.
4
We are a drugged nation.
6
We are a drug-seeking nation. The question is, why do so many people want to get high, feel differently than they do, and seek it so intensely despite the risk? It is so indicative of something much deeper happening in our nation...we can't stand our lives.
Why?
88
While I agree that pot should be legal, I think that when society sends a message that one drug is ok, then the attitude of some will be that all drugs are ok. I'm not saying that pot is a gateway drug, but rather that, as MJB says above, with society is now saying that it's ok to get high and feel differently than we do, it becomes more "ok" to try the harder stuff. Remember that during other "laissez faire" eras like the 1960s and 1970s, we also saw a surge in hard drug use.
1
Why indeed?
No one chooses to be an addict, but they choose to try it once or twice for various reasons. Cool, counter-cultural rebels who value their peers opinions over all the warnings. Or perhaps already living such a shabby joy-less existence that the promised high seems worth the risk. First it seems a harmless habit, but soon they enter the true Pit of Misery. They experience the longed for pleasure and release from worldly cares, worries and responsibilities followed by a state similar to being in the womb- no hunger,no fear-just curled up in a fetal position, with a covering over their head. They finally emerge into reality and the endless search begins again, first for the high but eventually to stave off the pain. Their body is just a husk, a tool that is only useful if it advance their search, otherwise it is neglected.
A thought experiment. What would happen if people could have free implants placed in their brains that triggered the pleasure centers in response to input from a button. How many would volunteer?, how many would become addicted? I'm sure there are many who would choose the implants. Personally I find reality challenging and interesting enough but some don't. I wish I had answers
1