Problem with meth is this. Immagine what your life would be like if i told you you could get super high by picking off maple leaves curing them in toothpaste then smoking it!! That is what Meth is like. Iit can be made from ordinary household items. So people make it then go on a spree and begin selling it. So they end up so fucked up they end up robbing places, not to feed the speed habit but just to eat or pay rent cause they dont wanna work they just wanna get cranked all day. Then there are the idiots who don't know how to make it but they can get some from a dealer till they run out of money. then they go on a crime spree, Iit's gotten worse thanks to the internet having the formula pasted all over the place! Now they bust balls if you try to buy Starter fluid (Diethyl-ether), Road flares (magnesium phospate) and matches (phophorus)! and you look cranked out. So unlike cocaine or heroin which come from another country which we can say, hey lets stop it from getting into the US. We'd have to ban a bunch of household items to stop Meth manufacture, Just like we'd have to ban apple cider and grape juice if we ever brought back prohibition!

Quoted: It's nasty stuff, and in my opinion will soon surpass crack cocaine as the leading drug problem in America, because its cheaper and high lasts longer. Also, do not have to go through problems of importing the powder cocaine to cook into crack. I know for sure when I first started working at the department, very few people were picked up for controlled subtance charges other than crack, water and the occasional powder cocaine, now it seems it getting pretty damn near even for coke and meth. edited

There is just no evidence at all that the rates of use overall are any different than they have been for the last forty years or so. It is hype. Slate magazine did a couple of good articles on the topic. One of them listed headlines from the last few decades showing that the newspapers were reporting a "new" meth crisis nearly every year.

There is one real explanation for the "new" meth crisis -- it sells newspapers and gives police departments an excuse to ask for more money. In fact, it is a major fraud.

Quoted: Who are you? The meth industry spokesman?  Why do you need proof from me?  But since you asked,

No, I can just recognize a fraud when I see one -- especially when I have seen media hype about the same "new" crisis over and over again.

About 10-12 years ago when I was right out of high school, I was kind of a doper.  There were plenty of drugs, but some were hard to come by, like Ecstasy.  You could only find that if you knew people who knew people in San Francisco. The 2-3 years I was involved in that sub-culture, I never once saw meth, or knew anyone who used it.  Never read about meth lab busts.  But talking with people who were from the lower 48 (either visting or recently moved) if they partied, sometimes they'd talk about rampant meth abuse in the lower 48, and how the bikers pretty much controlled the trade. The bikers here put on an annual music festival, and talking with them around a camp fire, they'd talk about crank and how they were trying to get away from it, since it wasn't much of a problem in AK.  I also read stories about it being a big problem in Hawaii at the time, very pure meth that they smoked and was causing crime to erupt in HI. In 1996 when I was canvassing for my friend's dad's political campaign, I knocked on the door of a tweaker dirtbag whose nose was one big abscess from snorting crank. I think that's the one case of abuse I ever saw. Now you read all these stories in the news about meth lab busts in the Valley and how North Pole has a big problem with it.  Is the meth problem worse today than 40 years ago?  I would say "yes" because there wasn't a whole lot of anything here in 1965.

Well, I was in California in that period of time, too, and there was meth and tweakers all over the place. It was goddamn everywhere and cheap. This book www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm is from 1972 and contains several chapters on the topic -- including a description of how speed was originally popularized just because of media hype like the current BS.

Quoted: Are you high? I'll take you on the flightline any day and you can ask some pilots themselfs if they are taking meth (on a semi-regular basis)...I would love to see the look on their faces'. If your job in the AF deals with nukes you can't even medicate yourself (I.E. take cold medicine)...but yeah...the AF gives pilots meth.

Pubdate: Sun, 19 Jan 2003
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2003 The New York Times Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Authors: Thom Shanker, With Mary Duenwald


BOMBING ERROR IN AFGHANISTAN PUTS A SPOTLIGHT ON PILOTS' PILLS

WASHINGTON, Jan.  18 - A military hearing into the deaths of four Canadians in an airstrike by two American pilots in Afghanistan has focused attention on the military's long-held but little-known practice of using drugs to keep its weary forces awake and alert - or to help them sleep off the stress of combat.

Amphetamines and tranquilizers - "go pills" and "no-go pills" - are considered useful tools for a modern American military that likes to fight at night, given its technological superiority in finding targets in the dark, and to an Air Force that must order its pilots to fly longer missions from fewer overseas bases.  Scientists are researching ever more potent pills, including some that may keep combat forces alert for 40 hours or more, because the military says that fatigue can be deadly.

"The 'go pill' is a tool of last resort," said Maj.  Gen.  Dan Leaf, the Air Force director of operational capability requirements.  "It is an insurance policy.  When they're in the air, there is no place to pull over.  It's a life-or-death situation.  The decision to take a pill is made by the individual pilot in the air."

But lawyers for the pilots, Majors Harry Schmidt and William Umbach of the Illinois Air National Guard, said that the men had felt compelled to take the amphetamine Dexedrine or be scrubbed from their mission, and that the drug may have clouded their judgment on that clear night last April.

Even though the case has brought new scrutiny of amphetamine use in the military, the defense's central argument is that the pilots should not be held responsible because they were not informed that ground fire they spotted near Kandahar was a Canadian military exercise.

The government argues that Major Schmidt ignored an order to hold his fire, and that Major Umbach, the lead pilot, failed to exercise good leadership.

Amphetamines as a combat tool are not new.  Military historians say they were dispensed to German and British forces in World War II.  The American military gave amphetamines to pilots on trans-ocean missions in the 1950's and 1960's, to air and ground combatants in Vietnam, and to Air Force pilots in the Persian Gulf war.

Asked to comment on the current case, scientists outside the military who research the use of amphetamines say it is impossible to know whether Dexedrine muddled the pilots' thinking without knowing how tired they were at the time, whether they had been taking the drug for many days in a row, and how strongly their bodies responded to it.

The most important factor in whether their judgment was impaired, these specialists said, is not the use of amphetamines, but whether the pilots were sleep-deprived before the mission.

"Some people are more sensitive to amphetamines than others," said Dr.  Eric J.  Nestler, a psychiatrist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.  "Even the same individual can differ in sensitivity from day to day, depending on their level of fatigue or stress.  So it's impossible to say what was going on in that plane with those pilots on that night."

Studies conducted over the last 40 years suggest that low doses of amphetamines do not affect alertness, reaction time or decision-making ability in well-rested people.  The drugs do improve the mental performance of people who are fatigued.

Researchers at Columbia University's medical school, for example, have recently tested amphetamines on people undergoing abrupt changes in their sleep patterns.  The subjects were kept awake at night for one week, and switched back to a daytime schedule the next.  Immediately after making such a shift, the subjects performed poorly on tests of cognitive ability and reaction time, said Dr.  Carl L.  Hart, an assistant professor of neuroscience.

But when given 5- to 10-milligram doses of amphetamines - the size prescribed by Air Force flight surgeons - the subjects performed as well as when they are rested.

"In well-rested people, you don't see the amphetamines cause much improvement," Dr.  Hart said.  "But in people who are changing shifts, the drugs bring their performance back up to baseline."

Air Force officials say that amphetamines have never caused a flight accident.  "The pill has never been found to cause or contribute to a mishap before," General Leaf said.

But exhaustion is a constant concern on lengthy missions, officials said.  The Air Force conducted one study, "Air Crew Fatigue as a Human Factor in U.S.A.F.  Class A Mishaps - a Twenty-Year Review," that found that fatigue was a factor in 101 accidents from 1977 to 1997.

Current policy allows a flight surgeon to dispense "go pills" on sorties over 8 hours in a single-pilot fighter or 12 hours in a two-pilot bomber, said Betty Anne Mauger, spokeswoman for the Air Force surgeon general.  Any unused pills must be returned by the pilots, and none are prescribed for helicopter pilots, who traditionally fly shorter missions, or for maintenance crews.

Ms.  Mauger said that sedatives - nicknamed "no-go pills" - are also prescribed, most often to help pilots adjust to a change in time zones or to sleep during the day in preparation for a night mission.  The sleeping pills Sonata, Ambien and Restoril, are used by the Air Force.

Air Force officials deny that pilots are forced to ingest the "go pills," although an agreement to carry them into the cockpit in case they are needed is one of many criteria that may be used by a commander and flight surgeon in approving a pilot for a mission.

The use of "go pills" has been opposed at even the highest levels of the Air Force.  When he was Air Force chief of staff in 1992, Gen.  Merrill A.  McPeak told his service's medical corps to stop dispensing amphetamines to pilots.

"I was a fighter pilot for 37 years, and I had been issued 'go pills' on occasion for long, over-water flights and so on," General McPeak, now retired, said in a telephone interview.  "I always just threw them away.  Most of the guys I knew just threw them away."

General McPeak said his decision to ban the pills was prompted by personal experience, and not based on any formal research.  "I have absolutely no science in back of that," he said.  "It was entirely subjective.  It just didn't match my style.  Jedi Knights don't need them."

The Air Force reinstated the use of Dexedrine in 1996.

In three studies conducted in the 1990's, helicopter pilots were kept awake for 40 hours and asked to perform certain maneuvers - making left or right turns while maintaining a certain altitude, or ascending or descending while maintaining the same speed.

Two of the studies were done in flight simulators and in the third, in real flights.  In each case, when the pilots were given 10 milligrams of Dexedrine one hour before being tested, they performed better than when they were given a placebo.  On Dexedrine, the pilots also reported feeling more alert and vigorous.

"If anything, a 5- to 10-milligram dose of amphetamines is going to improve their performance," said Dr.  Charles R.  Schuster, a psychopharmacologist at Wayne State University School of Medicine, who formerly led the National Institute on Drug Abuse.  "The culprit here, in my opinion, is sleep deprivation."

But other scientists question whether the controlled studies of amphetamines are enough to show how the drugs affect judgment in real life.

"These pilots were in an incredibly stressful situation," said Dr.  Jon Morgenstern, director of treatment research at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, at Columbia University.  "You had fatigue and the need to make a split-second decision.  I don't think you could rule out that the amphetamines would be a factor.  They might have altered the pilots' perception enough to make them feel more threatened than they normally would have felt."

Amphetamines increase alertness by increasing the supply of certain neurotransmitters in the brain.

But people easily grow tolerant to them, and they can be addictive.  Large doses, over time, can lead to such side effects as anxiety, paranoia and heart problems, medical experts say.  Civilian pilots are prohibited from using them.

But scientists in and out of the military say the use of amphetamines makes sense in combat.  Military pilots, they say, are less likely than the average person to become dependent on the drugs, especially if they take them under medical supervision and only in a deployment.

"If I were a general in charge of a combat force, and I needed people to stay awake for their own safety," Dr.  Nestler said, "I think that's a reasonable use of the drug."

Sounds like your a little touchy about the subject. Looks like in starting this thread we found a user. Best quit while your ahead. -Derek

Sounds like you made a stupid, erroneous assumption. Just FYI, I object to people being bamboozled into forking over more tax dollars for the "new crisis" which really doesn't exist.

Quoted: The USAF and USN for that matter, are not supplying their pilots with crystal meth/crank.  The pilots do have stimulants available to them for longer missions, but I can promise you that it is not something that is being cooked up on the carrier for daily use. The stimulant use is controlled by flight surgeons and is a prescription medication.  It is for use duing extended missions, such as the early CAS missions in Afghanistan where crews in single and two seat tactical aircraft had to fly 8-10 hour missions and recover aboard afterwards.  Most definitely not used during shorter missions.

The only real difference between that stuff and the illegal stuff is who makes it and distributes it.