Making the connections to mitigate meth
Last fall, the Portland Oregonian published an intriguing and provocative series on methamphetamine (I only found it just now thanks to a link to a gallery of tweakers' before-and-after mugshots posted at the end of a blogger's post about his speeding ticket).
"In fall 2002, Oregonian staff writer Steve Suo set out to answer a fundamental question: What was fueling the rapid growth of methamphetamine abuse across the West? The search turned up something surprising. While meth abuse had exploded to epidemic proportions during the 1990s, it also had inexplicably subsided at times. The newspaper's investigation asked why."
Legislators and judges railing against meth and taking out their frustrations on our clients' backs may want to take a few minutes instead to read about this possible supply-side answer: it's the pseudoephedrine, stupid. Even they could follow this logic:
* "The methamphetamine supply is uniquely susceptible to disruption by government." (PDF graph) Whenever new legislation has limited access to the chemical precursors used to manufacture meth, production has slowed.
* As restrictions on meth precursors took effect, the purity of meth, and consequently its potency, decreased. (PDF graph)
* Major declines in meth purity and potency have been matched by falling rates of meth abuse, traumas and overdoses. (PDF graph)
Were there the political will, we could make some headway on this thing. The title of the series: Unnecessary Epidemic.
Update: More pictures of folks on crack and crank this way, courtesy of "Law school and other neurosis inducing endeavors."
3 Comments:
Those photographs certainly are disturbing. Quite a deterrent, it is.
I had a piece on this meth precursor legislation yesterday, too, arguing that precursor crackdowns in Oklahoma merely caused drug substitution. I'm with you on looking for structural fixes instead of taking it out on your clients, but I'm curious if that's been your experience?
I just don't know, Grits. I started p.d.'ing in 1988. At that time, the predominant drugs of choice for my clientele, and what you saw in most traffic stops, were marijuana and Coors. Now, same clients, same traffic stops, but it's meth. Substitution may happen, but there would be significant differences in price and availability between the substitutes (crack cocaine, OxyContin, or heroin, I might guess) and meth, which is cheap and everywhere in my experience. If you approach meth abuse from a harm reduction perspective, the more that cookers and dealers step on their product, the better things get for public health and for our clients. Some people may be more likely to recover, and with less-potent meth out there, our clients who continue to use may still have better outcomes. Two open questions may be, at what point in the dilution of meth do our clients decide to switch to something harder, and if they do switch, do they find available (illegal) substitutes, or do they go without? (I'm leaving alcohol out of this equation for now, but we all know something about addiction models and the possibility of trying to feed the craving with alcohol)
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