Posted on 01/29/2005 10:32:26 PM PST by Mr. Mojo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Imagine that, with $100 worth of supplies bought from neighborhood stores, dealers could easily cook up $1,000 worth of a drug so addictive that users quickly descend into a hell of violence, crime and neglect.
That frightening scenario is the reality of methamphetamine, a drug that is sweeping rural America, spawning crime, child abuse and toxic pollution and ripping apart communities.
"It is out of control. It is a huge problem all across the United States," said Mike Logsdon, unit chief of an intelligence arm of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that collects data on the problem.
The drug, also known as crank, crystal, speed and ice, can be snorted, injected, smoked or swallowed. Within minutes, the user experiences a rush of energy and sense of well-being that can last up to 12 hours. But when it wears off, it leaves a feeling of deep depression and paranoia which makes the user desperate for another dose.
The scourge has taken hold in the last five years, and rural areas are bearing the brunt of the problem. Experts say that is primarily because meth is easy and cheap to make. Ingredients include readily accessible rock salt, battery acid, anhydrous ammonia and cold medicines. Recipes can be downloaded from the Internet.
As well, wide-open spaces in the country and small towns offer plentiful places to hide the drug activity.
"It's the first drug in the history of the United States we can make, distribute, sell, take, all here in the Midwest," said Detective Jason Grellner, of the Franklin County Sheriff's Department in Missouri, who seized 120 meth labs last year.
"You can't grow a coca plantation or an opium plantation here to get your heroin or cocaine, and marijuana takes four or five months to grow a good plant. With methamphetamine you can go out and for a couple hundred dollars you can make your drugs that day," Grellner said.
SWIFT AND SERIOUS
The problem descended on rural America with shocking suddenness. Sheriff Randy Krukow of Clay County in western Iowa said that in 1999, he had detected not a single meth-producing laboratory. By 2001, his force had broken up 56 in a county with a population of only 18,000.
For the fiscal year ending September 2004, the Drug Enforcement Administration counted more than 16,800 methamphetamine-related seizures by law enforcement across the country, up from 15,300 in 2002.
"This is the most serious law enforcement problem we've ever faced in the history of our state because this substance is so addictive and so easy and cheap to make," said North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem.
"When we look at our prison population, 10 years ago nobody had even heard of it. Now 60 percent of our male inmates are users and we're building a brand new prison for female users," Stenehjem said.
Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal recently told a statewide conference on combating the drug: "It doesn't matter where we go in the state, methamphetamine is there. The whole issue is eating us alive."
According to the Drug Trends Analysis Unit, an office in the Department of Justice, the highest numbers of meth labs are found in California, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri, all important farming states.
Clandestine labs were discovered in abandoned farms, in fields and ditches, vehicles, barns and even in 309 cases in hotel rooms. In one 2002 incident in North Dakota, an explosion set off a fire which destroyed the entire hotel.
In thousands of cases, people have been caught cooking the highly toxic chemicals in homes where children were present, breathing the poisonous fumes.
'SUPER LABS'
But these small mobile labs only scratch the surface of the problem. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, 80 percent of the methamphetamine sold in the United States is produced in so-called 'super labs' in Mexico or California run by organized crime syndicates which cook up vast quantities.
"The wholesale abuse of the drug is serious enough. But when we factor is the toxic environmental effects from unregulated chemicals used in clandestine laboratories, we see that methamphetamine is taking a terrible toll. No community is immune," Joseph Rannazzisi, deputy chief of enforcement for the DEA told a congressional committee in November.
Each pound of methamphetamines produced yields another five to six pounds of toxic waste. Cleanup after labs are discovered can cost thousands of dollars apiece and can endanger the lives of police officers who lack the expertise required.
In an effort to stem meth production, at least 20 states are now trying to limit the amount of cold medicines and decongestants they will sell to individuals to two packets at any one time. Some states are requiring stores to take them off the shelves entirely.
In future, shoppers will have to ask a pharmacist for them directly. The measures are being vigorously opposed by the pharmaceutical industry.
Faced with a growing number of addicts, few rural communities have treatment facilities or funds to create them.
The National Institute of Drug Abuse is funding clinical trials in five U.S. cities in California, Hawaii and Missouri, hoping to find chemical and behavioral therapies to free users from their addictions.
Meth's economic costs can be significant as well. A study issued last month by the Sam Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas studied methamphetamine use in Benton County, the home of retailing giant Walmart Stores Inc. The survey found that lost productivity and absenteeism because of methamphetamine addiction was costing employers there more than $21 million a year.
---And during those wild days of the 60's an 'older guy' (about 27) gave use 'youngsters' some sage advice; "Never trust ANYONE that sticks a needle in their body". I still 'live' by that sage advice.---
Words to live by! That was definitely the great divide and everybody knew it.
Yep, at least those of us with a brain :-)
That won't stop anybody. Once they start using Meth they think they're Superman.
Bump Ugly!
If you drive down rural Minnesota freeways, somedays you can smell the chemical stink of that crap cooking.
yea... I met some women who have taken it to lose weight too... it really works, in extreme cases you can lose 30 pounds in a single weekend... but the big problem is that even one dose of the drug can permanently overload & destroy your body's ability to make endrophins. So you can -never- be "happy" again unless using meth... life will seem permanently slow & sluggish after that.
I rather bear the burden of a fat butt than melt the teeth out of my mouth *LOL*
I've never had problems with it either whenever I take it. I never take more than I should.
LOL yeah yeesh... I had an argument with a co-worker (happily no longer working there as of last Monday)... he actually believed that the only reason meth, et al was dangerous was because of the "impurities" put in them from unregulated labs. LOL!
I can tell you first hand what addiction can do. It can do, and has done more that some of the anecdotes above.
It's a huge problem here (on the border) several recent apartment and home fires from meth lab explosions --- also we have had a few newborn babies beat to death --- one is dying right now --- 6 weeks old --- and I wonder if the parents are meth addicts --- because who else is going to abuse a newborn so badly?
DrMike
Hey --- that's me! I'm thinking about doing some meth. Freep mail me --- I'll tell you where to send the cash.
What does it smell like?
Yes, you'd almost have to be high yourself to make sense of these arguments. No, the WOD is not perfect, not by a long shot. We still have drug abuse. Then again, the War of Murder, War on Rape, etc. must also be considered failures to be consistent. Is the answer to simply legalize all of these activities? Hardly.
Worst thing I ever went through was late stages of Graves Disease.
My thyroid was pumping so much hormone out that if I was happy to see someone I would be so wired I could not talk.
Pure hell.
Then got nuked and the first year of being to the other extreme.
Pure hell.
Much better 20yrs later regardless of my lack of ambition to excersize outside of being in water to do so.
Cant handle Sudafed ect...just really had to change lifestyle to make body function well and do alot of preventative care.
Eat healthy, get plenty of rest and cope with arthretic pain and stress by being creative.
Still have one eyeball that the fatty tissue never disolved after treatment of the Graves. Not vain enough to care though.
Living wihtout being parnoid, anxiety filled, aggressive, mind racing, doing to many tasks at once, trying to do it all is wonderful.
So the thought of someone taking a drug street concocted or pharmacudical that is speed gives me the shudders after having Graves for so many years and not being able to come off that go go high and being sick was a horrible time.
I haven't read the rest of the thread yet, so I've not seen the responses to your horribly wrong post.
You couldn't be more wrong. I work in law enforcement, in a civilian role, and have for most of the past 13 years. In my position I see all the arrest reports and case reports filed by my department. At this time it's running about 60 to 70 percent meth related. Even cases as simple as forged checks are meth related at heart, with the offender trying to get money to buy more (documented by confessions in case reports).
This is a small rural county I live in. We are having to build a new 150 bed jail just to house a portion of our meth arrests. The rest go to surrounding counties with larger jails. The local weekly paper is full of hundreds of court cases that are meth related. It's an epidemic and it's not getting better. Where I sit right now typing this, there have been 3 meth labs found in just the past 2 months within 4 blocks, and I'm in the middle of a sleepy, quaint small town.
Just last year the son of our most popular state representative, himself a prominent citizen and successful business man, was sentenced to federal prison for trafficking in meth. He took a lot of otherwise successful people with him.
We have mobile meth labs in the trunks of cars. We have thefts and burglaries perpetrated by people who need to support their addiction. My office has a window from which I can see the sidewalk and street right in front of the building. I see people I've known all my life, been friends with, cared about... walking down the street in a haze, their faces just a shell of what they once were. We have people dying in their 30's and 40's from an addiction to a drug so hideous that they no longer care if they are going to die, as long as they get their next hit.
You refuse to see that the problem is real, because it goes against your agenda. Meth is an epidemic that's taking over rural America. I see it everyday. It's in the process of turning what was once a wonderful county to live in, into a hell hole that is dying from the inside.
Don't blame the police for it. We are doing all we can under the budgetary restrictions that rural living enforces. It's getting beyond our control. You take down one lab, 3 more spring up in it's place. You stake out 10 sets of anhydrous ammonia tanks, it leaves hundreds of others exposed. We don't have the money or manpower to fight it.
You simply don't have a clue.
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