Urban Meth Use on the Rise

Fox News ^ | Jan 28 2005 | AP

[pickemuphere]

CHICAGO — Already known as a rural scourge, methamphetamine is becoming a problem in a number of U.S. cities. Meetings of the 12-step group Crystal Meth Anonymous have increased in Chicago from one night a week a few years ago to five a week.

In the Atlanta area, methamphetamine users account for the fastest-growing segment of addicts seeking treatment. Rehabilitation centers there are seeing an uptick in the number of women meth addicts, while officials in Minneapolis-St. Paul say they're treating an alarming number of meth users younger than 18.

"Most people just think it happens in the farmlands and the prairies or out back behind the barn," says Carol Falkowski, director of research communications at the Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota. But that's not the case anymore.

Falkowski found that meth addicts now represent about 10 percent of patients admitted to drug treatment programs in the Twin Cities, compared with 7.5 percent a year ago and about 3 percent in 1998. About a fifth of those meth users who sought help in the last year were minors.

[Lazamataz]

The method of introduction is different, and that makes a difference. Regardless, it's bad stuff, which is why they try not to prescribe it at all.

But nonetheless, supervised use of heavy narcotics is as old as medicine itself. Dilaudid is basically pharmaceutical heroin, and Ocycontin isn't much better. Yet it is used -- WHEN CLOSELY MONITORED -- to good effect.