The Methamphetamine Epidemic — Less Than Meets the Eye notes that while there’s “an ever louder cacophony of news reports about the ‘methamphetamine epidemic’ sweeping the nation,” the numbers don’t agree:
Fortunately, there is less here than meets the eye. A review of the standard indicators of drug use, such as the Monitoring the Future (MTF) surveys of students, the National Household Survey (now known as the National Survey on Drug Use and Health), and the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) of hospital emergency room reports, does not show any rapid increase in methamphetamine use in recent years. In the MTF surveys, 15.4% of 12th graders in 1991 reported ever using amphetamines. By 1998, that figure had inched up to 16.4%, but by last year the figure had declined back to 15.0%, indicating that amphetamine use over the past decade has remained essentially flat. When MTF looked only at methamphetamine, which it separated out from other amphetamines only in 1999, it found that the percentage of seniors who reported ever using the drug actually declined from 8.2% in 1999 to 6.2% in 2004.
You don’t often see these stats cited:
But even if meth use isn’t on the rise, it’s still a highly addictive drug whose users are not amenable to treatment, right? Wrong. ‘The research shows it’s pretty much the same as any other drug,’ said Duncan. ‘If you look at usage information, you see that of all the people who ever used the drug, one in 10 used in the past year. Of those, one in 10 used in the past week. And among those past week users, the majority only used it once.’ It’s the same story with treatment, he said. ‘All the data show the same success rate with meth as any other drug dependence — except for tobacco, which is by far the most addictive drug. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about meth or heroin or alcohol — in each case most of the people who become addicted wind up getting off the drug.’
The real problem:
“It is not meth use that we need to be so concerned about, but home manufacturing,” said Duncan. “It is a serious environmental and public health problem, but it is one that is caused entirely by the war on drugs. If meth users could go to a pharmacy and get pure meth, not only would they be better off, but so would everyone else. This meth lab stuff helps feed the frenzy. It doesn’t matter if it’s just some guy with a Bunsen burner on his kitchen counter, you still get all these headlines about meth labs.”
The law of unintended consequences strikes again:
As for laws aimed at home labs, such as the ones either passed or under consideration in 40 states that restrict the sales of cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine, they are having unintended consequences, said McVay. “If you look at Oklahoma, which led the way with those Sudafed laws, what you are seeing is, yes, a 90% drop in lab busts, but the number of ice seizures has increased five-fold. Ice is the smokeable meth being imported by the Mexican gangs. In terms of overall meth use, these laws really do nothing except protect the market share of the Mexicans.”