Has The Opioid Epidemic Obsession Overshadowed Meth?
From Psychology today:
We’ve been focused on opioids for years, but meth is quickly coming back.
When I was immersed deeply in the world of drugs in the early 2000s, heroin was rarely spoken of in the media. But according to local and national media, cocaine and methamphetamine (“meth”) were huge problems. Everywhere, you’d hear stories of police busting huge meth (also known as speed or crystal meth) operations and the terrible problem the drug was creating in our country. Because meth labs were seemingly blowing up everywhere, the fear that meth was taking over was perpetuated.
Though fewer and fewer people were making the stuff locally, more and more gangs from Central America (primarily Mexico) were stepping in to cover the gaps. But, as police and the DEA continued closing in, it seemed that meth gradually disappeared from our consciousness, if not necessarily from the streets. The next thing you knew, the opioid epidemic seemed to be the only thing anyone could talk about.
But has it overshadowed the growing meth problem in the United States? Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot of media coverage surrounding the opioid crisis. According to a new report on preventable deaths from the National Safety Council, Americans have a 1 in 96 chance of dying from an opioid overdose. To put it in perspective, the probability of dying in a motor vehicle crash is 1 in 103.
But have we been too hyper-focused on this single drug?
The history of methamphetamines in the United States
There has been a long standing history of use of amphetamines in the U.S. since the 1930s and 40s. And methamphetamines (particularly the illicit drug methamphetamines hydrochloride) was popular in the 1990s and 2000s but began to decline in the mid-2000’s when stricter laws were passed and enforced. One of the key ingredients in meth is ‘pseudoephedrine’ which could be acquired from a common cold medicine—Sudafed—but the new law required pharmacies to retain records of all pseudoephedrine purchases. States such as Mississippi and Oregon required a prescription for purchase. I knew groups of meth “cooks” and dealers who would send out dozens of people (they literally called them smurfs) to go to hundreds of pharmacies around the state and obtain the large quantities of Sudafed that was needed. It took a lot of work and dedication (and a lot of meth to keep them going!). But the hard work got to everyone, and fewer and fewer labs could operate, so meth lab explosions became a thing of the past, and everyone seemingly forgot about meth.
Nowadays there may be fewer household meth labs, but there is actually more meth being smuggled in from Mexico. Sourcing the ingredients within the United States made it nearly impossible to produce on our home turf so Mexican cartels took this opportunity to produce purer, cheaper meth. And they became very good at it, creating Mexican superlabs that produced hundreds of pounds a day. The best meth I ever bought came from these “Breaking Bad” style labs…
If you don’t use meth or know anyone that does, you may be thinking “it’s not my problem.” But, if you’re a taxpayer (or a normal human being with emotions) it most certainly is your problem. According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the cost of amphetamine-related hospitalizations had increased from $436 million in 2003 to close to $2.2 billion by 2015. That’s a nearly 5-fold increased! Now, wouldn’t that money be better spent on mental health for anyone who needed it so people wouldn’t have to self-medicate?
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