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Meth has changed, and it’s sabotaging Oregon’s mental health system
Oregon Public Broadcasting ^ | 08/04/2022 | Emily Green (The Lund Report)

Posted on 08/04/2022 1:25:19 PM PDT by aimhigh

Editor’s note: This is Part 1 of a two-part series

In the state with the highest rate of meth use in the nation, the drug is driving severe mental illness among criminal defendants at the state psychiatric hospital, and other patients are paying the price.

Every time Anthony Ware got out of prison, he noticed the meth in Portland tasted more like chemicals. “My daily routine was like, wake up, eat a piece, let that kick in, and then smoke to keep my high,” he said of that time in his life. It was the “good stuff,” cooked by local bikers, that got Ware hooked on meth nearly two decades ago, he said. Then the drug cartels started making it. By 2018, the drug reminded him of “paint fumes.”

The changes Ware witnessed were at the heart of an article published in The Atlantic magazine this past October. In it, journalist Sam Quinones contended that cartels’ new formula for making meth is driving people into the throes of psychosis and homelessness at a much higher rate. With this “new meth,” he wrote, “traffickers forged a new population of mentally ill Americans.”

The observation holds particular relevance for Oregon, which has the highest reported rate of meth use in the nation. And more than two dozen interviews by The Lund Report with those involved in Oregon’s behavioral health system reveal that at every level, it’s well known that meth has changed — and that it’s inflaming Oregon’s already blistering addiction, mental health and homelessness crises like never before.

- - - - -
Despite Oregon’s early attempts to combat meth, its reach has only worsened:

> In 2020, Oregon jumped from having the ninth highest rate of meth use in the country to the highest, according to the most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health data.
> The volume of meth confiscated on Oregon highways saw a 75% increase between 2016 and 2020, according to drug trafficking reports.
>Meth-related emergency department visits in Oregon climbed about 20% in both urban and rural areas between 2018 and 2021, and last year, urban hospitals alone saw more than 16,000 meth-related emergency department visits, according to Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems data.
>The number of those patients spending more than 24 hours in an emergency department bed doubled during that time. The price of meth has dropped to as little as $5 for a three-day high, while the potency has increased. Anecdotal reports suggest meth overtook heroin as the drug of choice among Portlanders experiencing homeless as early as 2007.
>In 2019, Portland’s only sobering center closed, with its operator, Central City Concern, citing an inability to safely sober the increasing number of people coming in who were behaving violently and erratically while under the influence of meth and similar drugs.
>Methamphetamine contributed to more deaths in Oregon than fentanyl and heroin in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

(long article continues at link . . . .)


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Oregon
KEYWORDS: chat; drugcartels; drugs; justsayno; mentalillness; meth; methmadness; newmeth; notexcerpted; oregon
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To: Ex gun maker.

Oregon not only HAS assisted suicide, it was the first to have it, in 1994. Now nine other states have it, including Washington State. Washington DC has it as well.


41 posted on 08/04/2022 3:23:01 PM PDT by firebrand ( )
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To: Ex gun maker.

Oregon not only HAS assisted suicide, it was the first to have it, in 1994. Now nine other states have it. Washington DC has it as well.

The movie Soylent Green came out in 1973. Amid all the focus on how terrible eating people was, almost everyone missed the importance of the scene where the guy goes into the assisted suicide place. It took 21 years for science fiction horror to become reality.

The point of that scene was that evil comes in increments. We didn’t listen, and maybe we never will.


42 posted on 08/04/2022 3:29:38 PM PDT by firebrand ( )
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To: aimhigh

“cartels’ new formula for making meth is driving people into the throes of psychosis and homelessness at a much higher rate”

Just like CHINA planned.


43 posted on 08/04/2022 3:32:58 PM PDT by Uncle Miltie (This reality has been manufactured for you by the Deep State.)
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To: Signalman

Thank you. I was going to post some of these. Horrifying.


44 posted on 08/04/2022 3:34:48 PM PDT by firebrand ( )
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To: subterfuge

Couldn’t prove it by me.


45 posted on 08/04/2022 4:04:17 PM PDT by gundog ( It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. )
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To: packagingguy

Three days, minimum.


46 posted on 08/04/2022 4:05:40 PM PDT by gundog ( It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. )
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To: Yardstick

I ran into a guy in the woods a few days ago. He was on meth, I’m pretty sure, but didn’t yet have “ the look.” There was a pretty big smoker by the road that someone had dragged there, somehow. It was a half mile from the nearest road. I said something about it. He climbed down, rolled it up into the road, and said “Where do you want it?” I think he’d have carried it the two miles to the house, if I’d asked.


47 posted on 08/04/2022 4:14:21 PM PDT by gundog ( It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. )
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To: firebrand

Still, a lot of people blow their brains out.


48 posted on 08/04/2022 4:17:45 PM PDT by gundog ( It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. )
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To: RetiredTexasVet

Meth has changed. Made by the P2P process now; more potent.


49 posted on 08/04/2022 4:18:44 PM PDT by steve86 (Prophecies of Maelmhaedhoc O'Morgair (Latin form: Malachy))
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To: aimhigh

The state should do something! They should start giving away free, pharmaceutical-grade Dexedrine so their druggies won’t have to take tainted meth. That’s the ticket!


50 posted on 08/04/2022 4:21:35 PM PDT by VanShuyten ("...that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals)
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To: Big Red Badger

Summer in Portland, especially the last couple of years, is hot and dry with clear skies the majority of the time.


51 posted on 08/04/2022 4:22:07 PM PDT by steve86 (Prophecies of Maelmhaedhoc O'Morgair (Latin form: Malachy))
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To: steve86

Nice,
I’d love to visit
Fort Kitsap,,,
Lewis and Clark fan here.


52 posted on 08/04/2022 4:28:03 PM PDT by Big Red Badger (We Are JONAH)
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To: forgotten man
Heroin addicts are peaceful while they are under the influence.

I worked right next to a guy in a cubicle at an old call center job back in the 90s. Right next to him, every day. Until the day he wasn't there and I learned later he went to rehab for heroin. I had no idea that they guy I worked productively next to every day and engaged in conversation was a junkie.

53 posted on 08/04/2022 4:30:35 PM PDT by Drew68 (Ron DeSantis for President 2024)
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To: gundog

A friend from church got sent to the penitentiary for 18 years for selling cocaine. (He never wanted to go back so he went clean).

One time he snorted what he thought was coke. It wasn’t. It was meth. He stayed awake for 11 days. He said it was the most miserable experience ever.


54 posted on 08/04/2022 4:41:10 PM PDT by packagingguy
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To: packagingguy

He must have kept snorting more and more.


55 posted on 08/04/2022 4:46:38 PM PDT by gundog ( It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. )
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To: gundog

I don’t know it may have been really pure and he didn’t have a tolerance to it. Don’t know if cocaine and meth are cross-tolerant or not.


56 posted on 08/04/2022 5:11:23 PM PDT by packagingguy
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To: packagingguy

I think either will clear out of your system in three days.


57 posted on 08/04/2022 5:16:10 PM PDT by gundog ( It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. )
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To: GingisK

Oregon has been demoted to a city?

``````````````````````````````````````

Why not? “America” was long ago demoted to a “country” or “Nation.”


58 posted on 08/04/2022 6:23:05 PM PDT by Graybeard58
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To: aimhigh

When they overdose just let nature take its course. Saves money, time and space.


59 posted on 08/04/2022 6:28:07 PM PDT by fella ("As it was before Noah so shall it be again,")
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To: aimhigh

So it isn’t the addicts who are ruining the system, nor the dealers, nor the cartels. It’s the meth itself. Once again, no one is held responsible for his actions.


60 posted on 08/04/2022 7:44:20 PM PDT by Pining_4_TX (Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ~ Lewis Carroll)
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