Hyperbole Hurts: The Surprising Truth About Methamphetamine
Alberto Gonzales, George W. Bush’s attorney general, called it “the most dangerous drug in America.” A physician quoted by The New York Times described it as “the most malignant, addictive drug known to mankind.” A police captain told the Times it “makes crack look like child’s play, both in terms of what it does to the body and how hard it is to get off.”
Meanwhile, doctors routinely prescribe this drug and others very similar to it for conditions such as narcolepsy, obesity, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). If these drugs are as dangerous as Gonzales et al. claim, how can millions of Americans—including schoolchildren—safely consume them on a regular basis?
Columbia neuropsychopharmacologist Carl Hart explores that puzzle in a new report that aims to separate fact from fiction on the subject of methamphetamine. Hart and his two co-authors—University of North Carolina at Wilmington philosopher Don Habibi and Joanne Csete, deputy director of the Open Society Global Drug Policy Program—argue that hyping the hazards posed by meth fosters a punitive and counterproductive overreaction similar to the one triggered by the crack cocaine panic of the 1980s, the consequences of which still afflict our criminal justice system. “The data show that many of the immediate and long-term harmful effects caused by methamphetamine use have been greatly exaggerated,” Hart et al. write, “just as the dangers of crack cocaine were overstated nearly three decades ago.”
The report, published by the Open Society Foundations, begins by considering the addictive potential of methamphetamine. Despite all the talk of a “meth epidemic,” the drug has never been very popular. “At the height of methamphetamine’s popularity,” Hart et al. write, “there were never more than a million current users of the drug in the United States. This number is considerably lower than the 2.5 million cocaine users, the 4.4 million illegal prescription opioid users, or the 15 million marijuana smokers during the same period.” Furthermore, illicit methamphetamine use had been waning for years at the point when Newsweek identified “The Meth Epidemic” as “America’s New Drug Crisis.”
Although methamphetamine is ....
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2014/02/20/hyperbole-hurts-the-surprising-truth-about-methamphetamine/
= new reply since forum marked as read
called crocodil I think, because it literally eats away the skin and muscle tissue, while leaving the skin that remains leathery and scaly.
But that drug came about because of draconian laws that penalize drug users and addicts as though they were serious criminals, so that (1) addicts can't get treatment for what is, after all, a medical problem, and (2) both addicts and users who are not yet addicted seek other ways to get high when safer drugs are completely interdicted or made too expensive and dangerous to acquire because of criminalization, which, of course, inevitably draws dangerous criminals into the market as suppliers.
Studies have shown that people (AND research animals, like mice) turn to intoxicants to alleviate misery and hopelessness, but if opportunities to improve their situation are available, even physically dependent users will get off the drugs. That researcher--I am pretty dure he is the guy mentioned in the OP, Carl Hart--has written an important book on this research with crack and powdered coke. But an improved life means real opportunities, not just a few weeks' worth of rehab/treatment and a quick fix ("Here, have a crappy dead-end job and a crummy room in a rundown hotel."
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Unfortunately, like education, drug policy in this country completely discounts the science in the field, which is actually quite advanced in both areas. Policy is based on politicians' desire for electoral advantage (leading to their own accumulation of wealth and power) and on the fact that a huge number and range of stakeholders have a vested interest in policies that do *not* benefit the subjects (students in one case; drug users in the other), and in fact are almost always catastrophically damaging to them.
