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.
Yeah, that is OK.....
Death to tweekers.
Its been rampant in KC for at least 6 years now.
I disagree. I live in a comparatively wealthy county in Wyoming. We have very, very high employment here, with mining, gas and oil jobs that start at $19/hr, entry level, no experience, no diploma. Experienced workers routinely earn in the six-figures in a year, with overtime. All this, and meth use is absolutely exploding here. These well-paid workers are sucking this stuff up as quickly as anyone.
The fact is, the drug is the problem!! There are no underlying socio-economic causes at work. A recent speaker at our company is a recovering meth user/dealer. He answered this exact question by telling us he sold to people from every economic level, every race, every industry. He sold to kids, teachers, miners, roughnecks, waitresses, students... It is one of the most addictive drugs ever created.
"Many meth users are ingenious and determined in their techniques to avoid detection."
Don't forget there are also easily purchased digestable products to cover or disguise certain drugs like pot in a persons system. Not sure what they are since I'm not into the druggie scene (Proud Prude, Thank you very much). Only heard about this through employers and employees while discussing the drug problem in the work place.
I didn't say I was surprised by the prison culture. I said it's a travesty that U.S. prisons in the 21st century are still as they are. I admittedly know less than zero about running prisons, but I have to believe it's possible to change the inside culture from its current state, a state that breeds more hardened criminals.
I'll revert to my original point: Reinstitute mandatory work for every able-bodied inmate. First, inmates shouldn't be able to live on the taxpayer dole and do nothing. Second, by putting a productive workforce in operation, prisons could become economically self-sustaining (as they used to be when work was mandatory). Third, a tired man is far less likely to start trouble. And fourth, there is nothing better for a man than work and a sense of purpose; it would be infinitely more effective rehabilitation than what we have now.
As for the Sudafed issue, yeah, looks like the time has come for extraordinary measures. Lots of stores around here have already moved it inside locked cabinets.
MM
I nominate this thread as one of the most depressing I've ever read. Why aren't there more 'meth=suicide' PSAs on TV? I think some genuine scare ads that showed before/after couldn't do any harm and might even disuade someone from taking that first step. And where are the rural churches? What are they doing to combat this horror.
Again, you are so wrong it's scary.
The "politics of drug policy" has nothing to do with the use of meth. The addicts using, and the sellers making, don't care one way or the other about the politics.
Are you under the assumption that millions of dollars are coming into this, or other, rural counties to combat drugs? If you are, you are woefully wrong. Our police department's drug interdiction budget last year was $4000. That's it... that's all there was. We're talking about a town of less than 2000, not "rural" places like Des Moines, IA or Peoria, IL. Those are "big cities" compared to my little corner of the world.
In no way have we "chosen the prison industry over free enterprise". The jail we are building is to house locals. We are losing money by sending our prisoners to other jails because we don't have room for them. Ninty percent of cases now get probation because there's just no place else to put them.
Yes, there is an infrastructure problem, but it's not something that's fixed overnight. As I've said, we are a rural, agricultural county. We cannot compete with the counties in central Kentucky that have an infrastructure built in from being close to Louisville and Lexington. The state just doesn't care.
The bottom line is, the meth is here, it's a problem, and no amount of economic improvement will change that. If you could instantly build a 4 lane highway through the county, place factory after factory along that highway, give all the farms back to the families and open up every coal mine, meth would STILL be a runaway problem.
The "politics of drug policy" had nothing to do with it.
"And where are the rural churches? What are they doing to combat this horror."
Rural, city, what ever, where ever, being a church doesn't make "a church" the easy solution to this epidemic. It's much more complex than that. What puzzles me is why so many people across the socio-economic lines are willing to digest dangerous toxic poisons that do irreversable damage. The same people won't drink kitchen cleansers straight from the products containers. Why is meth so appealing to so many when they know how dangerous this stuff is? That's the mystery question.
" Meth doesn't hook its users immediately either. Most who try it do it once or every once in a while for a time and then quit. "
Well in my area of the USA I have witnessed nothing but permanently hooked and brain damaged meth users.
" Why is meth so appealing to so many when they know how dangerous this stuff is? That's the mystery question."
"According to some it's "the politics of drug policy".
I don't understand, what does that mean?
I was hoping you could tell me.
It means that it's easier to blame gov't policy than the lack of hope in the individual.
Meth was already a problem when I was in Portland in the mid-'90s. Absolutely murderous, body and soul-destroying drug. Speed kills, kids, and any regular methamphetamine user is better off out of the American gene pool.
Yeah, let's try the same dumb solutions that have never worked with anything else.
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