Meth vs. Crack

It shouldn't but it amazes me at how quickly the methamphetamine epidemic has been addressed and the resources put towards ending it. I think that is great but compared to how the beginning of the crack epidemic it is a real eye opener.

This ABC link is to a story about how pseudophedrine is not only now being kept behind pharmacy counters (some requiring ID and signing a form-not mentioned in this article but on the ABC WNT report). Also the drug manufacturors are re-designing their drugs to no longer contain the ingredients needed to make meth.

More Retailers Limit Cold Medicine Access
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=709739

:)

Crack was imported by the CIA.

There's the explanation. As in all things, the first thing to ask is 'Who profits?'.

Meth is made in basements, and apartments, and trailers in the desert, but the bulk of U.S. supply comes from huge labs in Mexico.

But it actually got its start in this country as an unofficially sanctioned stimulant given to truck drivers and the military (the drug was created by the Nazis to create a better soldier). Even today, under-the-table use in the meat-packing industry, where most of the workers are illegal immigrants who fear they will get deported if they say no to management, is a huge problem.

Do you by chance have something I could find to document that? Not that I doubt it, but I'm a journalist and it would make an interesting story. You can PM me if you something. Thanks.

Aren't meth labs springing up all over the (white) heartland and isn't crack use portrayed as a problem in AA communities?

My county is full of them.

In downtown Chicago

Is known as "Tweak Mountain".

The meth problem is nothing new. I know it's been a problem here in Sacramento since the 80's.

Nothing got done until it became an issue in the square states.

It was around long before the 80's. But the heartland is being polluted with the "new" fad.

Crack was considered an "urban" problem--understood to be African-American. Not true, however.

See the last post too.

Any hick with a room and some over the counter drug store supplies can make meth. Crack is poor man's free base, and requires cocaine, which is big international business. Too many people make money on crack for it to ever be eliminated. Meth won't actually be eliminated, but they can bust enough individual suppliers to make it look like they are getting something accomplished. And the prison industrial complex gets paid.

I would say both are very similar in that it wasn't until the problem was at epidemic levels that it was even addressed.

Crystal meth has been a huge problem in alot of parts of the country for at least a decade(2 or more in some places) now.

San Diego County used to be qualified as a "source nation" for crystal by the DEA.

Watched it grab and destroy a friend recently whose only now trying to put the pieces together.

pseudoephedrine products to be kept out of easy access.

It's much easier and cheaper to extract ephedrine from ephedra and synthesize methyl amphetamine from that than to go the allergy remedy route.

think about the criminals , who profitted
think about how they eliminated competitors
think about consolidated control

think about the war on drugs
anytime these scum declare a war on something , you will see nothing but more of what they claim to declare war on....

It is by design....they own the blackmarket, they own the prisons
cash is made in distribution, it is made on the crackdown end , it is made from the taxpayers, it is made from the slave labor that drives down wages. It is all the same evildoers. Both coming and going.

Meth is out of their control. They don't like that fact. That will change....

who self-medicate to an addiction level in order to avoid psychic and emotional pain. If the gov is ever successful at getting all of these various addictions under control, it may be very surprised at the rage that will surface all across the country. There are a lot of disillusioned and angry people who are in major denial about the propaganda we've been fed for a lifetime versus the reality of our various worlds.

The self-medication angle is NEVER talked about. If any reasons why the stuff is popular are ever mentioned, it's always some bullshit about people "Thrill-Seeking" or some such.
Never crosses the page that perhaps they're trying to make the pain of trying to survive on $6 an hour in Dumbya's Murka go away for a while.

what happened this time?

quick response? i think you forgot the bleeding sarcasm smilie. i'm only 30, and a full third of my life i've been aware of the meth epidemic, i've been around long enough to have had friends that have been hooked for years, and managed to move on past their meth addictions. and it's been going on much longer than my ignorant self has been aware.

the approach is completely wrong, removing some cold medicines from store shelves isn't going to stop the problem. it will do more to ensure the meth that IS cooked contains more WORSE industrial chemicals than the pseudoefidrene or whatever, McGuyver's got nothing on meth cooks. meth is like other hard drugs, it's not the "good" stuff that kills people, its the shitty stuff made from shitty chemicals in a shitty lab.

a much more far out, but likely effective solution, end marijuana prohibibition, most pot smokers are VERY much aganst meth use, as well as other damaging drugs, but as long as the police are enforcing pot laws, they will get ZERO support from the pot culture in the drug war. come clean, make it clear to the pot smokers etc. that you recognize which drugs are actually dangerous and which aren't and you might get a little cooperation, but as long as we continue to lump all drug users in the same category, it's hopeless.

:sarcasm:

Several years ago I spent time working with a federal task force focused on methamphetamine. In one of the public hearings, one of the members from the public health sector asked a representative of NIDA why, if the same indicator and warning systems were in place 15 years before, the crack epidemic did not raise any government attention. Dude literally stuttered an answer (basically, "I have no clue").

During the three years I worked on the project, I referred to it as the "White Kids in the Midwest are doing hard drugs . . . we must do something!" report.

Though I usually do.

Tweekers have been around a very long time.

The locking-up of pseudoephedrine is at least 20 years too late. I had friends who were totally fucked up on this drug in 1983, young parents who destroyed their own lives as well as the lives of their babies.

I hear racial overtones in threads like these (not you) where meth is a "white" drug and crack is a "bad" drug. In the real world, they are both "poor" drugs. Damn all the purveyors of this shit. I despise them.

That's my two bits. :thumbsup:

The main reason I used it and all of the other tweakers I knew that used it was really quite simple and uhmmm well stupid.

We did it to get more shit done. Why? Because we were poor and the more hours you could work the more money you had. It was stupid because the more you worked the more meth you bought. Vicious cycles only serve the tweakers cause to more cycles.

Adding insult to injury is that most meth users who start off snorting or shooting clean and pure crystal eventually lose contacts (arrest, death and running away) to the "good" stuff and have to buy more and more "cut" shit which is what crank really is. Crank is nasty nasty nasty stuff that goes from horrid to soul scaring real fast. Crank is the crap most people usually just smoke cause it is so nasty and bad that you cant snort it or shoot it. Crank whether its unrefined or just cut is what will really put the damage on.

Pure crystal will hurt you as well but as a poster said above its the shitty shit thats made in shitty labs with shitty ingredients that is the ugly side of not just this drug but any alterant.

Again though, the drug is not so much the problem as the circumstances that bring it about, abject poverty and abusive communities are every bit as much to blame as any user.

Finally let me just add that I haven't touch the stuff since about ten years ago when several bikers let me know that this drug and its associations are a killer... That killer had noticed me. I got out got back into life spanked my addictive behavior and now just partake of the green every now and then.

End rant.. thank you and I'm sorry...

on edit:clarity

far as I'm concerned. You may owe yourself an apology, but not a general one to everyone. Thankfully you were/are strong enough to change.

Here's to your success!

from the consumption of these drugs and others like them simply look for ways to produce and package it in a manner that sells the most volume and encourages people to buy and use more. "Crack" simply made cocaine easier to retail in poorer neighborhoods than the old white powder.

Meth is, as noted in several posts, rather easy to produce domestically, compared to cocaine. Those who are at the top of the chain include many of the same over-lapping interests. They are merchants of death.

i see it getting worse, and spreading from the west to other areas of the country. i see the MSM mentioning it, but bush doesn't say shit, the drug czar is all over stopping dope smokers, and meth usage is probably going up as it moves into new population groups, i.e. sub-urban teenagers.

crack was fairly isolated as an urban drug.

of course, if we had the balls to address drugs honesetly, we'd free the weed, and the meth problem would go "poof".

And you *know* who profits from the coke market.