Meth, Crack, and Racism in the American Public

My wife works in crime prevention in Portland, OR, and the issue of dealing with the Meth epedemic here has become hotter and hotter, especially this past year. Over 50% of property crime is linked to meth addicts, their labs condemn rental houses, and treatment success rates are dismal. Last August Oregon became the first state to require a prescription to buy cold medecines that contain pseudoephedrine.

The local government and community leaders have held many forums on the issue, trying to work together to clean up the very real problem that our state has with Meth.

Many times prominent African-American leaders from the city have spoken out at these meetings, saying that when Crack was tearing up their communities they were given no resources. Their opinion is that Crack did worse things to their communities than Meth is doing now, and that their situation was ignored because it had to do with poor black people who were being affected.

Black leaders say the fact that the city and state are waging an all out assault on Meth has everything to do with the fact that Meth is a white drug, and that they were abandoned because Crack was/is a black drug.

They generally don't come to offer any solutions to the Meth problem, just to vent their anger that they were ignored when their community needed it, and now they are not very interested in playing ball to help out the white people who are being affected by Meth.

What do you all think of this? Obviously black communities were left to rot by white governments, but does that mean that we should not deal with the issue at hand?

Also now that we've all seen what happened with Katrina, the wounds have been re-opened in regards to the abandonment of poor black people, so there are a lot of exposed nerves, and rightly so.

Crack is not really an issue any longer, as far as I know, but gang violence always is, and black leaders here still feel that they don't get the resources they need to build their communities back up.

When these things are brought up, there's really nothing anyone can say, except to acknowledge that yes, mistakes have probably been made.

In the end, resources will be devoted to combatting Meth, and the black neighborhoods will feel slighted. It's a very political issue, and honestly, there are a lot more white constituents to appease here than black.

Will this cycle ever end?

Race relations just seem to be getting worse.

Meth is very cheap and is moving into the poor black neighborhoods. They should call to light that drugs are still an issue in the black community but also work to make sure that Meth doesn't hit like crack in the 80s.

It's too bad that people aren't working together to share experiences, but emotions are very high right now.

Why would you think otherwise? Based on what?

Blacks have every right for fighting for what's rightly their's. Resources should not be only for the white neighborhoods.

Meth is a wicked scourge right now. Crack really just isn't around much anymore.

I agree that resources should go to black neighborhoods equally, but unfortunately the limited resources there are have to go where they can help the largest amount of people, and here that means that white people get much more.

It's not right, but it's the way that it is, unfortunately.

Making pseudofed a script does nothing to stop meth production. Meth labs aren't buying pseudofed at the corner drugstore -- they get it from a handfull of corrupt distributors. These distributors ship thousands of tablets/day, mostly the mini-thin pills you find at convienence stores.

It will force the drug companies to come up with some alternatives that actually work that can be sold over the counter.

I don't buy the notion that doing absolutely nothing is the best idea. At least they are trying to limit access to one of the main ingredients used in the manufacturing of meth.

By the way, I have yet to hear a single person from Oregon complain about this law. I've seen many posters here at DU complain about it, but I have to believe that they just don't get how severe the situation is.

Anything we can do to make it harder to make is better than doing abolutely nothing at all.

Both my wife and I have severe alergies and take psuedofed daily. We also work 50+ hours/week. It is very inconvienent to get to the drugstore when the pharmacy is open.

Meth is a big problem here too. But this law does nothing to stop the production of meth.

Stronger sentences would help.
More treatment/rehab would help.
Laws pertaining to wholesale distribution (where MOST meth labs get their ingrediants) would help.

I don't mind being limited on the number of tablets I can buy at one time. But to require a DR. to "allow" me to have psuedofed is total BS. Especially for those of us WITH NO HEALTH INSURANCE.

Stronger sentences drive prices down. A guy sitting on thirty years worth of the poop is going to be more eager to dump it than a guy sitting on five.

I agree with your other points.

I don't have allergies, so I don't know much about the various meds and what works or doesn't.

But don't let your desire to have that drug get in the way of the facts.

The notion that this law does nothing to stop the production of meth is a strawman argument.

Pseudoephedrine production is on the decline: drug companies are finally starting to listen now that the states are making it more difficult to purchase.
http://www.jointogether.org/sa/news/summaries/reader/0%2C1854%2C578544%2C00.html

Also, state agencies have reported consistent declines in meth lab busts since the law took effect. At this point Oregon has reached an 80% reduction in the number of meth labs being busted in one year.

http://www.oregondec.org/OregonMethLabStats.pdf

(note: this is not mongo -- this is daisygirl. I'm at mongo's computer and didn't want to log him off.)

Okay, I haven't tried Sudafed PE and neither has mongo. But things I'd want to know before even bothering with it:
1) Is there a generic that costs $3.57 for a box of 20 12-hour tablets of this medication? That's what we're currently paying for generic 12-hour pseudoephedrine. If I could get this for the same price, I might give it a shot.
2) How long has it been out? After phenylpropanolamine was recalled for causing hemmorhagic strokes, I'd feel wary about trying new decongestants that don't have a long-established safety record. PPA was on the market for ages before its safety came into question. Why should we have to try some new drug instead of one that's already working well for us.

You shouldn't have to try some new drug that you don't know about.

But I also shouldn't have to deal with total fucking zombies trolling my street for something to steal so they can get their next fix.

Looks like Pfizer's been selling it in Europe since 2003, but it's newly released in the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudafed
http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/05/01/64555553.shtml

When there is demand there is no stopping supply. It is a basic lesson of the drug war.

I say the most immediate thing that could be done is to legalize laughing grass. It would help with the alcoholism in this country too and besides that it should have never been made illegal.

The OP might want to read the most recent thread that went up at http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread21362.shtml from Seattle, Wahington. FoM is the person behind CannabisNews.com and she talks about her recovering status from meth.

When I smoke pot, I don't have the undying need to get more after I'm high....mostly I just get sleepy. I don't jones so hard that it ruines my life and the life of everyone I know.

Meth is a different animal. It is fucking poison, and should be legislated as such.

So, go for it - smoke, grow, and sell all the weed you want. Doesn't bother me a bit.

But I don't think that trying to get the tweakers to switch to weed is going to do the trick either. :shrug:

Also, cannabis is a valid way of breaking alcoholism and I have read testimony that it is helpful in breaking addictions to hard drugs. Seriously. But it also opens up the discussion by calling for reality (real solutions to real problems). It also takes a real hit out of the big problem of harm associated with substance abuse. The harms of substance use is so large it would help to shrink it so that further solutions are more conceivable.

In Hawaii on the big island, the crackdown on pot lead to a huge increase in the use of ice. I am not trying to be funny. I am as serious as I can be. If you approach a twisted problem caused by drug warrior reasoning, you have to take a wack at the Gordian knot.

Prohibition just drives up the price where addicts have to steal to pay for the habit. Prohibition is not prohibiting addicts into non-use. It would be better to treat it as a health issue and furnish whatever it takes to to feed or break the habit and I am telling you that cannabis can help break the habit for some. There is also ibogaine that might could help, but the drug warriors do not want to research it because it might actually cure addiction in one or two uses.

In South America and Europe the people with real solutions of harm reduction under a health care model are making real progress. There is just no way to arrest to success under a criminal justice model and it begs the question of what are you going to do when the Constitution is dead and the drugs are still here.

The drug war has nothing to do with the harms of substance use. If the government were really concerned with harm there would be much more attention to the substances that really cause harm. There would be a top ten list of harms and I would place refined sugar at the top of that list. Tobacco killed 5 million people world wide in 2000, but why did we threaten to halt a trade agreement with Vietnam when they did not want our tobacco, especially when a day of cigarettes meant a day without meat for the whole family? And why can you not find a chart of deaths by tobacco at the NIH website and why do they let the 400,000 figure stand in the media when it was 442,000 a few years ago at the NIH website? And why does the government not have a top ten list so we might know where transfats fit into the equation?

The government does not care about harm. They care about the drug war and the police state that uses the drug war to intervene in the affairs of other countries and all while the CIA is at the center of it all. There was even a proposal by a Congressman this year to make it illegal to mention the term "harm reduction" in opposition to the present policy. Prohibition is contrary to the official policy of the USG and I am sure I have a file for speaking out against that policy so continually and am officially regarded as an enemy of the state, which at this point the USG is an enemy of the people.

Just read http://narconews.com/ some and see the drug war has nothing to do with reducing harm. The drug war replaced "Save the rainforest" with "Destroy the rain forest even though the Colombian Supreme Court ordered a halt to the poison spraying."

Why can't the world spray our tobacco fields?

I went to Vancouver, BC recently, and saw the part of town where heroine addicts can legally shoot. I'm not sure how the program is doing, but it seemed like a very worthwhile study.

I'm just not sure how comfortable I am with this method as applied to meth.

There is no methodone-like drug to help people kick meth, and it is harder to get off of than heroine. Most people have to experience severe depression in order to kick it.

I'm all for treatment, but I just can't see publicly funding continued poisoning of really sick people. I think that we need to have more public funding to get people off of the shit, and really severe sentences for manufacturing it.

I watched my brother go from a complete computer genius IT guy making $80,000 a year to losing his job and stealing thousands of dollars from my parents. The shit will fuck you up. It completely changes a person - I've seen it up close.

the state of Oregon is doing to help them increase their market share.

These Sudafed restrictions do seem to lead to a decrease in home cooking, but not in meth use.

Landlords are at less risk of having their tenant cook in their house, causing the house to be uninhabitable without tens of thousands of dollars in repairs.

Of course you can't stop drug trafficing from Mexico, but if we can stop the risk of living next to a combustible toxic waste site, then I'm all for it.

The Mexican drug manufacturers can have the profit.

Crack is still a problem in both inner-city and suburban areas, but the media hype surrounding it died off about fifteen years ago. Meth has been in the suburbs and the sticks for as long as I can remember, but the media has just started to pay attention. Throwing money will help neither problem; until we have a sane drug policy meth AND crack as well as heroin will continue tearing the shit out of people's lives and families.

Meth has been around for decades, but it has most definitely become more popular, and thus more of an epidemic.

I regularly see fucking zombies in my neighborhood looking for anything they can steal to buy more meth. They ride bikes slowly up and down the streets, looking for scrap metal to sell, looking into parked cars. These are truly fucked up people.

Meth is harder to kick than any other drug. There is no such thing as methodone like there is for heroine. Meth actually blocks the neuroreceptors of the brain that give you pleasure, making it so that unless you are taking the drug you cannot feel any pleasure for 2-3 years. Most people become severely depressed when they try to kick meth, and the recovery rate is absolutely dismal.

I understand what you are saying about us needing a sane drug policy, and I think that weed should be legal. But not meth. There should be huge sentences for manufacturing meth. It is out of fucking control.

You don't ever come fully back from it if you are one of the few that survive it.

I planted trees and did other woods work on and off on the 80s and 90s. Many of my coworkers are dead now from that poison. I thank the Goddess I never have tried it.

I remember seeing a friend start trembling when he saw a street dealer after being in Avery, Idaho for three months planting trees.

His entire earnings from that contract was turned over for that he was enslaved to in less then two weeks.

He tried to kick it, but he didn't succeed. He failed fitting in back as school because his behavior and attention span had morphed. I remember seeing him muttering and fidgeting at a computer in the University of Oregon (UO) Library in Eugene. He tried to cut his throat and chickened out after the first cut and ran to Sacred Heart two blocks away in the UO neighborhood he lived in.

He was on anti-depressants, crank occasionally, and a whole lot of suffering and struggling with the twelve steps.

He died sitting in a chair in his apartment with a beer in his hand when his heart gave out. He was 31, never stole anything, and he drove everyone nuts who had to deal with him. But he was a brother and I an still saddened by his loss and I miss this brother.

Glad to hear you were never drawn in with him!

I also lost a friend here in Portland to it. He realized he was fucked up, and decided on a Friday that he'd check in to rehab on the next Monday. He got his stuff into storage, dropped his dog off with a friend, and was convinced to go out to the coast for a hike to clear his head with another friend.

The hike turned out to be a very bad idea, because he was really delusional. He started hearing voices, and took off from his friend. That's the last anyone saw of him. We're pretty sure he jumped off of a cliff to his death. He was never found.

replied to wrong post

between what the black community wants and fighting the meth problem? I mean dealers often carry a variety of 'product', there may well be some overlap, even if crack isn't as dominant as it is in other communities. Are the labs in poorer communities in the city or out in the sticks? I don't know I am sort of thinking out loud here.

Meth is really a mid/low income white problem here, and is not much of an issue in the black communities.

It is manufactured wherever they think they can get away with it, often in the city in rental houses. Once a lab has been discovered and busted, the house is condemned and unoccupiable until it has been cleaned up at the owner's expense. The house becomes toxic and contaminated.

the labs were maybe showing up in black communities because they are typically lower rent and so would be impacted by the labs. Y'all have got a hell of a difficult situation to sort out. I wish I had some more helpful ideas for you.

The rural communities have been hit really hard as well all over the west. Northern California is especially bad.

For some reason it really is a white problem that really hasn't taken hold with black people. Guess that's why it has the nickname "Hillbilly Heroine".

You are so fucking right. :blush:

Hate it when I write faster than I think.

It's a problem in the Hispanic community also (at least here in New Mexico).

There was recently and identity theft ring that got busted here, and it was all centered around meth heavy hispanic gang members.

I can see, given the racial population makeup in NM how that would be the case. We don't have near the hispanic population here that you have there.

What would happen if meth were legal?

1. No more home labs.

2. No more adulterated crap.

3. No more acquisitive crime (speed freaks stealing to buy more)

4. No more structural crime (crime related to the black market)

5. Reduction in spending on police and prisons.

6. Funds available for treatment, prevention, and harm reduction

7. A presumed initial increase in meth use, with all the problems that go along with it, followed by a leveling off of use as people find out its positive effects can be followed by negative effects.

According to the national household survey on drug use, about 12 million Americans say they've used the stuff, but only about one million last year. And the year before that. And the year before that. And the year before that.

The shit has been around for decades. There is no evidence there is a real, nationwide "epidemic" of meth use despite all the attention it gets. I hypothesize that people are seeing all these meth lab busts in recent years and conflating them with "epidemic" use.

And ditto for crack. Legalize it too. Legalize, regulate, tax, control. You can't control what you prohibit.

Some drugs, especially weed, should be legal - no question. But meth is a different animal altogether. It is a fucking poison with no redeeming values. This is not some vision-quest shit, it completely takes over peoples' lives. They can no longer care for their children, they no longer work - they completely check out in need of another fix.

You say, "There is no evidence there is a real, nationwide "epidemic" of meth use despite all the attention it gets. I hypothesize that people are seeing all these meth lab busts in recent years and conflating them with "epidemic" use."

That's a total load of crap. I see tweakers on bmx bikes every day cruising the streets for scrap metal, returnable bottles or something they can steal. Go out to east Portland and tell me it's just a media frenzy.

I know landlords who have had to spend tens of thousands of dollars to make their houses habitable again after some fucker decided to cook there and got busted.

I've seen the hazmat teams going into meth houses in their suits. They take out everything, including the carpet, and haul it to the toxic waste dump. I've just randomly seen that multiple times.

Meth should never be legal, and don't try to tell me it's not a problem when I see it every fucking day.

...I said we'd be better off legalizing it, for the reasons I listed.

As for whether meth is a national epidemic or not, try starting here:

http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH.htm#NSDUHinfo

Not that there aren't a lot of tweakers in Portland. But there were speed freaks in Portland in the 1970s, too, and ever since. The mass resort to home cooking is what's relatively new.

And you haven't responded to the list of benefits of legalization I posted...

I can agree with all of your listed items when associated with weed. They all make absolute sense to me, and I'm all for it. But meth is just a different deal.

Meth does terrible long-term shit to the neuroreceptors in the brain, causing life threatening depression when you try to kick. It's not like waking up a little hazy from smoking out heavily the night before.

I literally watched my brother lose his $85,000/year job in IT and begin stealing from my parents to support his habit. It sent him on a major downhill slide that eventually led him to the past couple of years in prison from a head-on car crash that permanently paralyzed a 19 year old woman.

The shit is fucking evil. I don't think the legalization arguments apply here.

I'd maintain that at least half your brother's problem stems from meth being illegal. It's a horrible drug, but making it illegal encourages people to sell it. If your brother could get free and perfectly "clean" shit from a government clinic, he might've held onto the job and been able to shake the habit before his "slide." The laws are plenty tough now, and the problem seems to get worse the tougher they get. I seriously believe that enforcement and long prison sentences drive drug prices DOWN, not up. It's not like the dealers have actuaries working for them, amortizing the cost of their risk according to the number of years by weight--they have their own heads, which tells them to dump the shit if the heat is on. One reason the market is so flooded right now. No one wants to hang on to a pound of shit until they get a good price. Meanwhile, state prisons solidify the meth gangs and help them "network" and expand their reach.

Yeah, I've lost good people to the shit as well, and that's why I say legalize it. Not like weed, which should be sold and taxed more like liquor, but like heroin and cocaine. The government should undercut the criminal dealers by giving the best shit out for free. I know it sounds crazy but this has worked in other countries--not a guarantee that it'll work perfectly here, but I doubt we could end up in a worse mess than now. (Of course, we could keep or stiffen the penalties for illegal dealing if the govt. got involved in the way I suggest.)

All I can envision is total chaos. It's not like Heroine where you just nod off - these motherfuckers are AWAKE and totally manic for 24-36 hours at a time. They finally crash, then get up and do it all over again. We would need to somehow contain these people and keep them occupied or else all hell would break loose.

As for my brother, there's no way he could have done his job on meth, legal or not. He was so fucked up that all he wanted to do was come down so that he could get high again. Seriously. He looked like shit, was a total zombie, unable to communicate or function in society at all.

You can't shake meth without going through 6-12 months of severe depression, he wasn't going to just shake it. There is no methodone equivalent, so you just have to ride out the depression, but first you have to come to long enough to realize that you've lost everything and need to climb out of the hole.

I can't with a good conscience say that our government should be dealing shit like that. I think that the government needs to offer people real treatment options, real ways out of the hole. As it stands there isn't much help, and people end up losing their jobs, cars, homes, kids, everything. All for a really agressive and teeth gnashing high.

Sorry. Free clean shit from the government just makes me think of more zombies in the streets. It's hard to imagine it not being that way.

You wouldn't give alcoholics free state funded alcohol.

Most people take your attitude. Meanwhile the meth fiend gets high every day, somehow. Someone is getting rich on the sales, somehow. And people who don't try it, they are not put off by the illegality of it, but by the state the fiends are in. The laws aren't deterring anyone. A person who doesn't worry about turning into a zombie doesn't worry about breaking the law. The laws are worthless--everything you've said is an argument for that point.

It'll only get worse and worse if you leave it all in the hands of the law enforcement industry.

If you look at the 'crack' situation of the late 80's, this came under the Reagan administration, poppy bush and the whole rich get richer and the poor get poorer thing.

It's heartbreaking really. I hated seeing this in the black community and it's equally sad to me to see it spreading to white communities in the form of meth.

It's unfortunately a reaction to so many people struggling so hard for so little, or at least that is my take on it. It just seems it gets to epidemic proportions under republican regimes, but I could be wrong...

I'm sorry that I don't have any concrete suggestions for resolution. Just wanted to weigh in with these thoughts.

:hi:

It is very much a class issue. It's cheap as hell, and the high lasts up to 24 hours, making for some really strung out unemployed and desperate people.

Strung out, manic, and desperate people are generally not the sort I want living near me.

:scared:

I do hope that something is done.

As one that has lived in communities that were ravaged by drugs, homelessness, poverty, etc. it's not fun to live around, I know. Eventually, I had to move away. Not the ideal solution as you hate to abandon your community.

It was a problem before I got there and got worse during the time I was there--it being much bigger than me, and having to be concerned for my welfare, it became a necessity...

I hope that the same doesn't become a necessity for you--

:hug:

I live in NorCal where it is a real problem, along with the haz-mat issues of disposal. Meth has no socially redeeming features; it rots the brains of the users, contaminates the buildings in which it is produced, and damages the innocent children of the users and producers. It also leads to brutal child abuse, as I have seen in our local papers. Pot, by comparison, is virtually harmless.

There was a case this year in Portland where they found a baby in a meth house who was wearing severly moldy diapers. The parents were so checked out that they just never changed the baby's diapers.

Agree with you about pot vs. meth by the way. :)

One thing about meth - it proves once and for all that the old stereotype about whites being smarter than blacks is 100% BS.

I wouldn't touch meth or crack. Why the hell anyone would want to smoke or shoot up something made with highly flammable chemicals in a kitchen sink.

Now when it comes to nature's bounty...




I might be a bit more open-minded...

Put down the crack, the meth and the rotgut. Enjoy LIFE!

I work at Portland Saturday Market after several years of doing the same work at Saturday Market in Eugene. Meth is ravaging this area.

I deal with examples of the human wreckage of Meth every week 10 months out of the year.

http://www.oregonlive.com/special/oregonian/meth/

(Title: 'UNNECESSARY EPIDEMIC: A Five-Part Series' -the Oregonian)

Doubters that this is a major problem, read it, it's a good primer on Meth.

Photo galleries:

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/photos/gallery.ssf?cgi-bin/view_gallery.cgi/olive/view_gallery.ata?g_id=4087

(The Children or Meth)

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/photos/gallery.ssf?cgi-bin/view_gallery.cgi/olive/view_gallery.ata?g_id=2927

(The faces of Meth)

I truly think that it's hard to imagine without seeing what fucked up zombies these people are. Dead eyes, gaunt, pale, teeth falling out. It's like the night of the living dead sometimes

:scared: