Gay Health Activists Mobilize To Make Meth 'Uncool'

http://www.365gay.com/newscon05/04/040405meth.htm

It's a Friday evening, traditional kickoff time for the party scene in New York's gay community, but the 75 men packed into a small room at a gay health center aren't in a partying mood.

Through a humbling 12-step program modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous, they are battling to kick their addiction to methamphetamine, and in doing so escape an epidemic that is roiling urban gay communities nationwide with disease, despair, embarrassment and anger.

Meth is an equal-opportunity menace many thousands of men and women, gay and straight, have fallen prey to it in rural villages, placid suburbs and city slums. But gay leaders in New York, California and elsewhere bluntly acknowledge that their communities have distinctive problems with the drug, and an unavoidable responsibility to combat it.



I've had friends who have become addicted to meth and it's not pretty. I think this is another case of the authorities seeing this as primary a gay thing and not doing enough to stop it.

gay men would be hit harder by this drug. Then again where I'm from, Coke and Xanax are what the straight college kids are doing.

Meth use has been linked to an HIV virus that is particularly aggressive. I didn't realize meth was an urban problem.