[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Crystal Meth (Page 1 of 3)
Posted: 10/17/2005 8:42:09 AM EDT
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We've had pot threads for a while now, and there's been an argument that if it's a victimless crime then let it go. I'm very much in favor of that for pot, I bet it's less harmful than Fritos. But Meth is bad juju. It really does ruin people's lives, and does so in short order. While I'm in favor of people making up their own minds and living their lives however they want, this stuff is not good and IMO should be banned (as it is) with nasty jail sentences attached. I know people that ended up hooked on meth and it just cooked their brains. Ten years later and they're not really back to normal. It's soooo bad. Reefer Madness had nothing on the reality of the situation with meth. Pot should be legal, but meth is of the devil. |
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<yawn> Another "I'm only for freedoms I like" hypocrite. Nasty jail sentences, JBTs, and a justice system gone wild. Oh, and my friend with the chronic allergies can't get Whatsifed without a major hassle. But hey, small price to pay to eradicate the meth scourge -- I'm so glad there are no more meth addicts, and that the AstraZenica wannabes have stopped blowing up motel rooms with their portable chemistry sets. jafager |
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tweekers are only part of the problem that meth brings. Cook sites are the other problem. A cook site is almost always going to be full of haz-mat nasties. That makes for a problems whether you live next door, or when you are a first responder when one of these things catches fire. Sudboy |
Well, let's see. Marijuana is probably less harmful than Fritos, so that's OK, make it legal. Meth ruins your pleasure receptors in your brain for many years, causing people to do weird things. That's bad. See how that works? Gray areas. You got to shade the black and white together to come up with gray areas. |
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Once again, if you want a drug that ruins lives then alcohol wins all the prizes. Meth isn't good stuff, and tweakers are not fun to be around. But if you compare the damage done to individuals and society by alcohol and meth, there is no comparison. Alcohol causes far more problems and destruction. Always has, always will. Most people miss the point. We could fairly well assume that some of these drugs have hazards. Like, duh. Guns have hazards, too. The question is: Does prohibition make the situation better? As with alcohol -- as bad as that shit is -- there isn't much evidence that prohibition makes the situation better. It doesn't stop people from using it. There has never been any evidence that prohibition laws really reduce use. Those who want to fuck themselves up with the stuff will still fuck themselves up with meth they made in their garage or bathtub gin. It doesn't stop the bad guys from making it -- in fact it encourages them because it raises the prices. Perhaps worst of all, it doesn't stop kids from getting it. In fact, the US Government reports that kids find it easier to get illegal drugs than the legal ones. If you understand that the biggest alcohol epidemic ever seen among US teens came during alcohol prohibition, then you begin to understand why. With all these drugs -- as well as with alcohol and guns -- there are better, more cost-effective ways to address the problem than banning them. Now for some background information on this topic which I am sure most of you didn't know. druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/CU36.html Chapter 36. The amphetamines The drug now known as amphetamine was first synthesized in 1887; 1 but medical uses were not noted until 1927, when its effectiveness in raising blood pressure was discovered, as well as its effects in enlarging the nasal and bronchial passages and in stimulating the central nervous system. The drug was accordingly marketed in 1932, under the trade name Benzedrine. 2 In 1935, its effectiveness as a stimulant led physicians to try it, with excellent results, against a rare but serious disease, narcolepsy, the victims of which fall asleep repeatedly. Other amphetamines, and other uses for these drugs, soon followed. In 1937 the discovery was made that the amphetamines have a paradoxical effect on some children whose functioning is impaired by an inability to concentrate. Instead of making them even more jittery, as might be expected, the amphetamines calm many of these children and notably improve their concentration and performance. By the end of 1971, at least 31 amphetamine preparations (including amphetamine-sedative, amphetamine-tranquilizer, and amphetamine analgesic combinations) were being distributed by 15 pharmaceutical companies. 3 The more scientists learned about these new drugs, the closer the parallel with cocaine appeared. The following description of the psychic effects of a modest dose of amphetamine, written by Drs. Ian P. Innes and Mark Nickerson in Goodman and Gilman's textbook (1970), may be compared with Sigmund Freud's description of the effects of cocaine (see Chapter 35): The main results of an oral dose ... are as follows: wakefulness, alertness, and a decreased sense of fatigue; elevation of mood, with increased initiative, confidence, and ability to concentrate; often elation and euphoria; increase in motor and speech activity. Performance of only simple mental tasks is improved; and, although more work may be accomplished, the number of errors is not necessarily decreased. Physical performance, for example, in athletics, is improved. These effects are not invariable, and may be reversed by overdosage or repeated usage. 4 Large doses of cocaine, it will be recalled, are followed by depression. Precisely the same proved true of the amphetamines: "Prolonged use or large doses are nearly always followed by mental depression and fatigue. Many individuals given amphetamine experience headache, palpitation, dizziness, vasomotor disturbances, agitation, confusion, dysphoria, apprehension, delirium, or fatigue." 5 Cocaine, it will also be recalled, first came into common use after a German army physician issued it to Bavarian soldiers. During World War II, the American, British, German, and Japanese armed forces similarly issued amphetamines to their men to counteract fatigue, elevate mood, and heighten endurance. In at least two respects, the amphetamines proved superior to cocaine. First, they can be taken orally in tablet form; cocaine is poorly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract and is therefore usually either injected under the skin or into a vein, or else sniffed. Second, the amphetamines taken orally have a much longer duration of effectiveness–– seven hours or so–– while cocaine must be taken at more frequent intervals for a sustained effect. After World War II, many physicians prescribed the amphetamines routinely for depression. In many cases they proved worthless or even harmful. In certain cases, however, they proved helpful during the depressive phase of a manic-depressive psychosis; and in certain cases patients unable to concentrate on their work, because of the kind of " neurasthenic" depression and fatigue from which Sigmund Freud suffered, reported that the drug elevated their mood just enough to enable them to work effectively–– as cocaine had aided Freud. just as cocaine and heroin users learned that a combination of the two drugs (the speedball) provided results superior to either drug taken alone, so some psychiatrists and pharmacologists concluded on the basis of clinical experience that a combination of an amphetamine and a barbiturate or tranquilizer secured improved effects in some cases of depression. This superiority has not been fully established through adequately controlled, double-blind tests, in which neither the physician who administers the drug nor the patient taking it knows whether medication or an inert substance (placebo) is being taken. Nevertheless, Dexamyl and other combinations of this kind are still commonly prescribed by physicians, not only against chronic fatigue and against depression but also as supposed aids to dieting. Do amphetamine users escalate their doses, as is so often the case with cocaine users? Not always. A small daily dose of an amphetamine, for example, may continue to be effective for years for narcolepsy and among those children for whom the drug has a calming effect. Some patients who occasionally use an amphetamine for fatigue or depression report that the same modest dose remains effective year after year. Other users escalate their dose rapidly to enormous levels–– swallowing whole handfuls of amphetamine tablets instead of only one or two. The eventual outcome is often an amphetamine psychosis very similar to the cocaine psychosis from which Fleischl suffered–– even to the feeling of ants, insects, or snakes crawling over or under the skin. Side by side with the expansion of the legal market for prescribed amphetamines after World War II, a modest black market in the drugs also grew up. Early black-market patrons included in particular truck drivers trying to maintain schedules which called for long over-the-road hauls without adequate rest periods. Soon truck stops along the main transcontinental routes dispensed amphetamines as well as coffee and caffeine tablets (see Chapter 22) to help the drivers stay awake. Students, who had long used caffeine tablets, now turned instead to these new amphetamine "pep pills" when cramming for exams. The use of amphetamines by athletes and by businessmen (and their secretaries) was reported as early as 1940. 6 Periodic law-enforcement drives to curb black-market amphetamines proved ineffectual, or perhaps even counterproductive; for the publicity surrounding the arrests served to advertise the product–– and the arrests, by increasing the risk and therefore the price, served to attract additional entrepreneurs. When amphetamines were hard to get from other sources, users purchased Benzedrine inhalers, broke them open, and ingested the substantial quantities of amphetamine found inside. Later the Benzedrine inhalers were withdrawn from the market; they were replaced by inhalers that do not contain amphetamine. Cocaine users also turned to the black market for amphetamines, and used them much as they had formerly used cocaine. The cost of the amphetamines is trivial–– as little as 75 cents per thousand tablets at wholesale, even during the 1960s. Thus peddlers could sell black-market amphetamines at a fraction of the cost of imported cocaine and still make a substantial profit. The "speedball" of the 1960s contained heroin and an amphetamine rather than heroin and cocaine. In 1965, amendments to the federal food-and-drug laws were passed, designed to curb the black market in amphetamines as well as in barbiturates and other psychoactive drugs. The amendments did indeed make it harder to divert legally manufactured amphetamines into the black market. A second effect, however, was to stimulate greatly the illegal manufacture of amphetamines in kitchens and garages within the United States. This is a topic to which we shall return |
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druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/CU37.html Chapter 37. Enter the "speed freak" Amphetamines taken orally can be used in excess with unfortunate results; but enormous quantities of oral amphetamines were consumed in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s with apparently little misuse. As late as 1963, indeed, the American Medical Association's Council on Drugs, while recognizing the possibility of misuse, reported that "at this time compulsive abuse of the amphetamines constitutes . . . a small problem [in the United States]." 1 Much the same finding was reported from Sweden (see Chapter 39). The intravenous injection of large doses of amphetamines, in contrast, is among the most disastrous forms of drug use yet devised. The early history of amphetamine mainlining has been explored by a California criminologist and authority on illicit drug use, Dr. Roger C. Smith, in an, unpublished study he made available for this Report. Dr. Smith is now director of Marin Open House, a comprehensive center for drug and other problems in San Rafael, California. The Smith study was a part of the San Francisco Amphetamine Research Project, financed by the National Institute of Mental Health and launched by Dr. Smith in May 1968, in cooperation with the Haight-Ashbury Medical Clinic in San Francisco. Much of this chapter is drawn from Dr. Smith's study, "The Marketplace of Speed: Violence and Compulsive Methamphetamine Abuse," and from a report by a California psychiatrist, Dr. John C. Kramer, entitled "Introduction to Amphetamine Abuse," published in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs in 1969. Dr. Kramer began his amphetamine research while he was on the staff of the California Rehabilitation Center in Corona, California–– a center in which "speed freaks" as well as heroin addicts are incarcerated; he is at this writing on the faculty of the University of California at Irvine and on the staff of Dr. Jerome H. Jaffe's Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention in Washington, D.C. The earliest reference to the intravenous use of amphetamines that Dr. Smith was able to unearth concerned groups of American servicemen stationed in Korea and Japan during the early 1950s. 2 These men were said to have learned to mix amphetamines–– then nicknamed "splash" with heroin and to inject the combination. This was, in effect, the traditional "speedball," with amphetamine substituted for cocaine. Servicemen brought the custom home with them after the Korean War. No doubt other small groups also learned to mainline amphetamine, alone or with heroin, during the 1950s; but no public furor was raised against the practice–– and it did not spread alarmingly–– until the 1960s. Sigmund Freud's first dispensing of cocaine to a patient, it will be recalled, was to help his pain-wracked friend, Fleischl-Marxow, get along without morphine. During the late 1950s, in the San Francisco Bay Area, a number of physicians prescribed amphetamine injections for the same purpose–– or allegedly for the same purpose. Dr. Smith reports there is little doubt that some Bay Area physicians were sincere in this use of amphetamines as a treatment for heroin addiction. They were nevertheless arrested for supplying drugs to heroin addicts. Other California physicians, it appears, were less conscientious. Some of them, for example, prescribed Methedrine (methamphetamine) "for heroin addiction" without even examining patients to see if they had needle marks. One Methedrine user told Dr. Smith: Then there was a doctor ... who would write anything for anybody at anytime and he was making $7 a visit and on the day we went down there he wrote almost 400 prescriptions at $7 a head. So you can imagine how much money he was making. He made $2,800 that one day and they used to make caravans down there and even from [Los Angeles] to his place. You'd get within two blocks of his office and you'd start seeing people you knew from all over. 3 One heroin addict reported that for $6 or $7 he could get from one physician a prescription for 100 Methedrine ampules–– plus hypodermic needles and sedatives. He could then sell enough of the ampules at $1 or $1.50 apiece to make a living. "In many instances," Dr. Smith adds, "heroin addicts who had formerly engaged in burglary, bad checks, credit cards, or a variety of other 'hustles,' began to make money exclusively by sales of Methedrine." 4 It was at about this time, in the early 1960s, that Methedrine came to be known as "speed"–– perhaps an allusion to its use in the traditional "speedball." More recently, "speed" has come to refer to any amphetamine which is injected intravenously. In addition to the "scrip-writer" physicians described above, some San Francisco pharmacies began selling injectable amphetamines without a prescription, or on the basis of crudely forged prescriptions, or on a telephoned "prescription" from a user posing as a physician. Federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies cracked down on such practices in 1962 and 1963; physicians and pharmacists alike were convicted of law violations, accompanied by widespread publicity. Thus the delights of amphetamine mainlining, previously known primarily to heroin addicts, became a matter of common knowledge and general interest. When the injectable amphetamine scandal broke publicly in 1962, and federal and state agents descended on the manufacturers, Abbott withdrew Desoxyn ampules from the market. In July 1963, Burroughs Wellcome similarly withdrew Methedrine ampules from distribution through retail pharmacies, but continued to make them available to hospitals as an adjunct to surgical anesthesia and for other essential uses. Withdrawal of legal supplies meeting FDA standards of purity for injectable products marked a turn for the worse. The black market next secured nonsterile amphetamines at trivial cost in vast quantity from large chemical manufacturing companies which shipped in bulk. The infection rate among addicts no doubt rose when these nonsterile products took the place of FDA-approved ampules. The 1962 crackdown on legal sources of amphetamines also triggered the emergence of illicit factories, called "speed labs," where speed was manufactured. "According to many of the users interviewed during the course of this study," Dr. Smith reports, " 'speed labs' began to operate as early as 1962, and by 1963 several labs were in operation in the San Francisco Bay Area. Because of the shortage of speed in other cities on the West Coast [a shortage caused by the withdrawal of Burroughs Wellcome and Abbott ampules and by the crackdown on physicians and pharmacies], the manufacture and distribution of speed became an extremely profitable enterprise, and opened up new sources of revenue within the San Francisco drug scene." 5 The further history of these labs will be reviewed in Chapter 40. * * The 1965 amendments to the federal drug laws, by requiring manufacturers and wholesalers to keep records of all shipments, made it more difficult to divert legal amphetamines to the black market. This served to protect the "speed labs" from low price legal competition and enabled them to raise prices. American black-market operators got around the new law, however, by placing large orders for legal amphetamines to be sent to addresses in Mexico; they then smuggled the American amphetamines back into the United States. (The same dodge had been used by morphine traffickers during the first years after passage of the Harrison Act of 1914.) When law-enforcement officers at length caught up with this practice, excessive shipments to Mexico were curbed. This further protected the black-market speed labs in the United States from competition. By 1965 or 1966, the full impact of speed mainlining became visible. A report entitled "Amphetamine Abuse: Pattern and Effects of High Doses Taken Internally," by Drs. John C. Kramer, Vitezslav Fischman, and Don C. Littlefield in the Journal of the American Medical Association for July 31, 1967, outlined the problem–– and Dr. Kramer's 1969 paper, cited above, supplied later details. The first use of intravenous amphetamine, Dr. Kramer notes, is "an ecstatic experience," and the user's first thought is, "Where has this been all my life?" Dr. Kramer goes on, "The experience somehow differs from the effects of oral amphetamines not only quantitatively but also qualitatively." After this first experience, the user mainlines intermittently for a time; "doses probably equivalent to twenty to forty milligrams per injection may be taken once or a very few times over a day or two. Days or weeks may intervene between sprees. Gradually the sprees become longer and the intervening periods shorter; doses become higher and injections more frequent." 6 The sequence recalls Dr. von Fleischl-Marxow's experience with cocaine in Vienna in the 1880s. "After a period of several months," Dr. Kramer continues, "the final pattern is reached in which the user (now called a 'speed-freak') injects his drug many times a day, each dose in the hundreds of milligrams, and remains awake continuously for three to six days, getting gradually more tense, tremulous and paranoid as the 'run' progresses. The runs are interrupted by bouts of very profound sleep (called 'crashing') which last a day or two. Shortly after waking ... the drug is again injected and a new run starts. The periods of continuous wakefulness may be prolonged to weeks if the user attempts to sleep even as little as an hour a day. " 7 Dr. Kramer cautions against the simplistic view that anyone who once shoots amphetamine intravenously inevitably follows this pattern of escalation. "There are individuals who have tried it once or several times and have chosen not to continue." 8 Nevertheless, the tendency to progress to compulsive use is very strong. The desired effects of speed-injecting, Dr. Kramer continues, "are extremely vulnerable to the impingement of tolerance. It takes ever more drug to recreate this chemical nirvana. It is the desire to re-experience the flash and the desire to remain euphoric, and to avoid the fatigue and the depression of the 'coming down,' which drives the users to persist and necessarily to increase their dose and frequency of injection. And it is this persistence of use and these large doses which bring on all the other effects of these drugs." 9 Dr. Roger C. Smith here adds a highly significant fact about the intravenous-amphetamine euphoria. Many young people in our culture are brought up with a seriously damaged self-image. The methods of discipline imposed upon them as children, or other factors, convince them of their own inherent worthlessness, though they may mask this sense of worthlessness with bravado. "Many of the young people who are currently involved in the speed scene," Dr. Smith notes, "report that they were initially attracted to the drug because of the instant improvement noted in self-image. Many suffered from feelings of inferiority and lack of self worth, which manifested itself in chronic, and often debilitating, depression. "Many [of these young people with damaged self-images] had experimented with a variety of depressants, including heroin, barbiturates, and alcohol, but found that this only increased their feelings of depression and self-deprecation. The alleviation of depression brought about by the use of speed may well be the key factor in determining why some individuals progress from occasional to compulsive use of the drug" 10 –– though Dr. Smith also emphasizes that other factors may come into play as well. In any event, Dr. Kramer points out, the improvement of self-image and relief from depression is purchased at a very high price if intravenous amphetamines are the mode of relief. Whether or not small oral doses of amphetamine are effective aids to dieting, the large doses taken during speed "runs" produce profound anorexia (lack of appetite). "Users uniformly lose weight during periods of abuse. Appetite suppression may be so profound that users may find the very act of swallowing difficult." 11 Some users force themselves to take small amounts of highly nutritious foods or beverages, or inject themselves with vitamins and dietary supplements. Upon awakening after a prolonged speed run, a riser may eat large amounts. But even so, "undernutrition and malnutrition result, and undoubtedly complicate all the other effects of high dose amphetamine use." 12 Sleep deprivation similarly exacerbates and complicates the direct pharmacological effects of the drug. "The observation that many of the physical and psychological symptoms are largely dissipated after sleeping for a day or two suggests that the insomnia alone is a major contributor to the syndrome," Dr. Kramer notes. But, he adds, "the fact that some symptoms persist after weeks or months of abstinence indicates that sleep deprivation is not alone responsible. Considering that the usual pattern seen during well-established high dose abuse is of three to six days of wakefulness followed by one or two days of sleep.... users spend about one-fourth of their time in sleep, about the same proportion as non-users only distributed differently." 13 A paranoid psychosis, similar to the cocaine psychosis, is the almost inevitable result of long-term, high-dose, intravenous speed injection. This psychosis "can be precipitated by either a single large dose or by chronic moderate doses," 14 Dr. Kramer adds. Typical features of the speed psychosis include feelings of persecution, feelings that people are talking about you behind your back (delusions of reference), and feelings of omnipotence. * Unlike paranoid schizophrenics, however, "speed freaks" are usually aware that these feelings are drug induced; that is, they retain insight. "High-dose intravenous users of amphetamines generally accept that they will sooner or later experience paranoia. Aware of this, they are usually able to discount for it." Nevertheless, Dr. Kramer adds, "when drug use has become very intense or toward the end of a long run even a well-practiced intellectual awareness may fail and the user may respond to his delusional system." 16 Dr. Kramer cites others as believing that the drug merely brings into the open preexisting paranoid tendencies. On the basis of his own experience with a large number of high-dose users, Dr. Kramer expresses the opinion, which he agrees is not testable, that despite differences in vulnerability to the paranoid effect, "anyone given a large enough dose over a long enough time will become psychotic." 17 * The formication hallucination first noted by Freud's friend Fleischl–– that is, imaginary snakes or insects crawling on or under the skin–– also characterizes the speed psychosis. Speed freaks call them "crank bugs," Dr. Roger C. Smith reports. "It is common to see speed freaks with open running sores or scabs on their faces or arms as a result of picking or cutting out these hallucinated crank bugs." He quotes an experienced twenty-four-year-old speed freak on the subject: "It's just that when you're shooting speed constantly you start to feel like there's bugs going around under your skin and you know they're not there, but you pick at them anyway.... Once in a while you'll see a little black spot and you'll watch it for ten minutes to see if it moves. If it doesn't move it isn't alive. You can feel them on your skin. I'm always trying to pick them out of my eyebrows. 15 Dr. Smith cites numerous examples of this paranoia of the speed freak. "Each user has several entertaining stories relating to something which he did in order to protect himself from the police or secret agents whom he suspected were about to arrest him. In some instances the individual will lock himself in a room and refuse to come out, will arm himself with a knife or gun, or may, on rare occasions, actually assault a suspected informant or policeman. Tales of such activity have now become an integral part of the lore of the speed scene......... 18 The fact that the speed scene is actually heavily infiltrated with informers and narcotics officers does nothing, of course, to dispel this paranoia. The paranoid behavior of the speed freak may at times look superficially like murderous aggression. Dr. Smith quotes a "veteran" of the speed scene on this point: It happens quite often by mistake where somebody's all jacked up and has been for say a week, maybe two or three weeks, and somebody burns [cheats] them, they may go crash for a day or so to get their head back together somewhat, and when they get up they don't remember too much what the person looked like or who the person was, they're just out running around. I've seen people who are running around on the streets with a gun under their jacket, and they run up behind somebody and say ". . . that looks like him–– long blond hair. We got you." and then "Sorry, wrong one" and go on down the street and on to the next guy with long blond hair and stop him. 19 An even greater hazard of violence, Dr. Smith adds, accompanies the mainlining of amphetamines along with barbiturates: In the course of our research, we have interviewed numerous individuals who regularly combine speed with barbiturates, boiled down and injected intravenously, who have exhibited highly irrational, often violent behavior. Barbiturates are commonly used to terminate the speed run and induce sleep, although they are sometimes used intermittently as the drug of choice. Even the most committed speed user agrees that individuals shooting [short-acting] barbiturates (sometimes as much as 10 Seconals per injection) are the most dangerous and irrational individuals in the drug scene. The barbiturates produce a state of disinhibition similar to alcohol intoxication, with slurred speech, staggering, and often, surliness and aggressiveness which can easily be escalated to physical violence, particularly when used in combination with speed. 20 In support of this view, Dr. Smith quotes a drug user's description of one of his friends: He's a very nice person, and extremely generous; however, when he gets all jacked up and he is wired [stimulated with speed] and is doing reds [Seconals], then he is in trouble. Because pretty quick he's got a shot gun and everybody else has got a shot gun. I've seen him out in front of ... the freeway entrance herding the hitch-hikers away because he's paranoid of them. At four o'clock in the afternoon, with a full length shot gun, he's screaming "move on, you can't stand there, move on." That's just the way he gets. 21 Another user adds: "Barbs make you want to get out on the street and start kicking asses. Speed gives you the energy to get up and do it." 22 Contrary to a widespread impression, Dr. Smith goes on to explain, the confirmed heroin addict is a highly skilled individual. "It is his skill as a 'hustler' which economically sustains the heroin marketplace." 23 It is the speed freak who is in fact unskilled and poorly adapted to the drug scene. He is generally white, essentially middle-class in terms of education, family background and attitudes, and totally lacking in the kind of criminal skills which are essential to survival in a criminal environment. As critical as his lack of criminal skills is his failure to understand the values and norms traditionally associated with criminally oriented groups or subcultures. These values and norms are often antithetical to those of conventional society, but nonetheless they serve approximately the same function, namely, to offer guidance to participants and to control behavior which would be harmful to the group as a whole.... While there is a backlog of experience and tradition which the heroin addict in neighborhoods of high use can draw on, there is nothing similar in the speed culture, which emerged in its present form in late 1967, and is still undergoing rapid changes. Since there is little dependence on legitimate business for the exchange of merchandise for money, and very little integration with other illegal enterprises as one traditionally finds in heroin cultures, the "hustling" which does take place is sporadic, unskilled and predatory in nature, often directed toward fellow users and dealers, and only occasionally does it involve others outside the scene. The speed freak is, in many ways, an outcast in a society of outcasts. He is regarded as a fool by heroin addicts, as insane and violent by those using the psychedelics or marijuana, and as a "bust" by non-drug-using hustlers. 24 Coming from a middle-class background, the speed freak attempts initially to support himself by "legitimate" means, "such as panhandling, selling underground newspapers, or working." But speed tends to incapacitate him for both legitimate employment and "hustling": The compulsive speed user is usually incapable of hustles which demand composure, since he is highly agitated, suspicious and fearful that at any moment he may be detected, or the drug effect may leave him so paranoid that he would not take advantage of opportunities because they appear "too easy" or a "setup." Because of his compulsive verbalization, hyperactivity, emaciated physical state and bizarre demeanor, few businessmen will accept checks or credit cards from him. In our experience, many "speed freaks" who have attempted to pass bad checks have become panicked at a request for identification, convinced that his intended victim suspects him and will report him to police. In several instances, users have presented a check and immediately fled. Because of the style of life which most compulsive users are involved in, their demeanor is overtly suspicious. While most heroin addicts can operate without fear of detection because of the drug effect, the speed user fits the popular stereotype of a "dope fiend." 25 Cut off in these ways from both licit and illicit employment, Dr. Smith continues, the speed freak survives by sponging on others and by dealing in drugs. Lacking skills and standards, he cheats. And the victims of his cheating are generally speed freaks like himself, paranoid like himself, on the verge of violence like himself. The violence that ultimately emerges–– a high level of violence, including rape, mayhem, homicide arises when the direct drug effect, the paranoia, occurs in a chaotic community where almost everybody is simultaneously engaged in sponging on everybody else, cheating everybody else–– and suspecting everybody else. This is the scene that leads even confirmed drug users to conclude that "speed is the worst." Contrary to a popular belief, however, speed–– even in enormous doses–– very rarely kills. Dr. Smith, for example, cites one case in which a speed freak injected 15,000 milligrams of the drug–– 15 full grams–– in a twenty four-hour period without acute illness. For neophytes, it has been stated, "death has followed rapid injection of 120 mg"; but "doses of 400 to 500 milligrams have been survived." 26 "Very few deaths have been recorded in which overdose of amphetamines has been causal" 27 Dr. Kramer declares. That even massive doses of speed rarely kill is surely a tribute to the inherent toughness of the human body. That the human mind can ultimately recover even from prolonged amphetamine paranoia is an equal tribute to its toughness–– yet that appears to be the case. "What has been most striking in our experience," Dr. Kramer declares–– and Dr. Smith agrees–– "has been the slow but rather complete recovery of users who, according to their own descriptions and that of others, had become rather thoroughly disorganized and paranoid prior to their detention." 28 The more florid symptoms fade within a few days or weeks. "Some confusion, some memory loss, and some delusional ideas may remain for perhaps six to twelve months. After that time, though there may be some residual symptoms, they are slight, and not disabling, and are noticed primarily by the (now abstinent) user himself. Most commonly, ex-users report slightly greater difficulty in remembering." 29 Following full or almost full recovery, curiously enough, ex-users also report a personality change that they deem favorable. Many of them, it will be recalled, were depressed, withdrawn, silent, and lacking in self esteem before turning to speed. "As a group they describe being more open and talkative than they had been prior to their use of amphetamines. They like the result and declare with certainty that it is due to their experience with amphetamines." 30 "Anyone concerned with the welfare of amphetamine users," Dr. Kramer goes on to stress, "and the users themselves, should recognize that most, if not all, can recover from even the most profound intellectual disorganization and psychosis given six months or a year of abstinence." 31 This message, in addition to being true, is of considerably more publichealth significance than the false p6pular slogan, "Speed kills." The problem is how to achieve prolonged abstinence. Many speed users, like most of the heroin users, Dr. Smith notes, have tried repeatedly to stop by a conscious act of will. Few succeed. Their withdrawal misery is too great. "Many users who attempt abstinence find it difficult because of the fatigue which results, extreme at first, gradually diminishing but persistent, perhaps for months, " 32 Dr. Kramer adds. Abstinence is often forced on a speed freak by a prison sentence, or by incarceration under a so-called civil commitment program, or by commitment to a mental hospital. "No data has yet been collected to indicate the long-term value of such enforced abstinence," Dr. Kramer concedes; but on the basis of his own experience on the staff of the California Rehabilitation Center he is highly skeptical. "Certainly, many who have been incarcerated have returned to their drug use upon release." 33 Thus the revolving-door pattern so familiar to heroin addicts may be the future of speed freaks as well. A person genuinely concerned for the welfare of speed freaks, Dr. Kramer sadly notes, is "in a bind. Users do not readily volunteer for care, but commitment programs offer little besides enforced abstinence. Should the user be permitted to live in the limbo of his drug or forced into the limbo of an institution? Can voluntary programs be devised which are sufficiently useful and attractive that users will seek them out and persist in their program? Can commitment programs be devised which do not resemble slightly benign prisons? Or, do we just let the user seek heaven or hell on his own terms while the community offers help only on its own terms ?" 34 Dr. Kramer poses these questions; neither he nor Dr. Roger C. Smith nor we have any glib answers to offer. Drug-scene participants themselves, however, may currently be finding answers (see Chapter 42). |
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druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/CU38.html Chapter 38. How speed was popularized The damage done by heroin, as demonstrated in Part I, is largely traceable to antinarcotics laws and policies and to the heroin black market that has grown up under the shelter of those laws and policies. The damage done by LSD, as we shall also see, is in large part a function of laws and attitudes. This is certainly not true of the speed phenomenon. Unlike the heroin and the LSD cases, it is large intravenous doses of the drug itself that have devastating effects in the case of speed. But laws and policies were certainly responsible in considerable part for popularizing speed. One instance of this, the antispeed campaign launched by the United States Food and Drug Administration in 1962 and 1963, has already been cited. It was the publicity accompanying this campaign that alerted a whole generation of young people to the perils (and pleasures) of speed. As in other cases described earlier and to be described in subsequent chapters, the peril became the lure. A somewhat different process helped to popularize speed following San Francisco's 1967 "Summer of Love." That summer many thousands of adolescents took off for the Haight-Ashbury district, the center of the "hippie movement," where marijuana and LSD were freely available. This migration, and others like it, will be discussed at length in Part IX. There was relatively little speed, and little violence, that first summer. * The sheer size of the immigration, however, overwhelmed the LSD–– using "flower people" who had established the Haight-Ashbury subculture. In increasing numbers, they moved into the hills. Their places were taken by young people looking, not for love and mind-expansion, but for drug "kicks." Marijuana and LSD faded into the background; speed took over. New times, new customs, new participants, new needs, new wants–– and a new drug to meet those needs and wants. * By September 1967, however, one-third of 413 residents of the Haight-Ashbury area had injected amphetamines intravenously at least once. 1 The conversion to speed was facilitated, moreover, by the antimarijuana and anti-LSD campaigns being waged at the time. The "LSD chromosome scare," to be discussed in Part VII, was a central feature of this campaign. Many young people heeded the warnings with which the newspapers, magazines, and radio and TV programs were flooded, and gave up LSD. In its place they turned to speed. The change was for the worse. Users of marijuana and LSD recognized and publicized the overwhelming hazards of speed in an unsuccessful attempt to turn the tide. Thus the poet Allen Ginsberg, the author of "Howl," remarked in an interview in the Los Angeles Free Press, an underground newspaper: "Let's issue a general declaration to all the underground community, contra speedamos ex cathedra. Speed is antisocial, paranoid making, it's a drag, bad for your body, bad for your mind, generally speaking, in the long run uncreative and it's a plague in the whole dope: industry. All the nice gentle dope fiends are getting screwed up by the real horror monster Frankenstein speed freaks who are going around stealing and bad mouthing everybody." 2 This quote from Ginsberg was widely publicized throughout the underground press. Timothy Leary, the Beatles, and the Mothers of Invention also warned against speed. 3 The overground press, however, continued to rail against LSD–– and marijuana. Police and narcotics officials, too, must bear some of the responsibility. Their main concern at the time was certainly marijuana and LSD, the traditional "hippie" drugs. While they searched for caches of those drugs, speed took over. A seventeen-year-old girl whose friends had used speed remarked: "Some police officers we interviewed said pot was deadly and addictive! When kids try it and see it's all a lie they figure the stuff about speed is false, too." 4 Two psychiatrists, Drs. James R. Allen and Louis Jolyon West, and a medical student, Joshua Kaufman, after a study of adolescents who ran away to the Haight-Ashbury in the summer of 1967, made the same point in more general terms: "The horrible reactions to marijuana predicted by various authorities were virtually never seen. The runaways generally took this to mean that all the widely advertised dangers of drugs were establishment lies. This further alienated them from the social structure and made them more willing to experiment with all sorts of chemicals." 5 Even the warning, "Speed kills," may have played its subtle role in popularizing speed. The 1970 Interim Report of Canada's Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs (popularly known as the Le Dain Commission) comments on this possibility: Some "speed" users who inject almost suicidal doses of methamphetamine into their veins without any regard for their safety and health, may actually be trying to test the truth of the youth slogan "Speed Kills". The role of the doomed person who is at once a martyr sacrificing himself, a hero braving the confrontation with certain destruction and a gambler playing dice with death, is a role which seems to have a strong seductive pull for some young people who are morbidly hungry for compassion, admiration and excitement. For these individuals the slogan "Speed Kills", may, paradoxically, carry more attractive than deterrent power–– and thus may not serve the purpose for which it is being promoted. 6 Sound public policy, the speed phenomenon suggests, would dictate telling young people the truth. They should be informed, for example, that speed, though it very rarely kills, is far more damaging than marijuana. But most drug propaganda campaigns try to keep this a secret for it may also reveal to young people that marijuana is far less damaging than speed. We shall return to this theme–– the many ways in which laws, policies, and propaganda campaigns serve to encourage a shift from less dangerous to more dangerous drugs–– in subsequent chapters of this Report. |
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druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/CU39.html Chapter 39. The Swedish experience During the past few years, the American public has been warned of what happened to amphetamines in Sweden. Sweden, we have been told, was so blind to the hazards of the amphetamines that in 1965 these drugs were made available free of charge on the Swedish health plan. The results were 10,000 or 20,000 amphetamine "abusers" springing up practically overnight in a small country of 7,000,000. Now (the story goes) Sweden has banned amphetamines altogether, even on prescription. The Nixon administration's 1969-1970 drug bill proposed that the United States also prohibit amphetamine prescriptions except for a few special conditions–– thus profiting from the Swedish experience. The actual Swedish amphetamine experience, investigated there for this Consumers Union Report, suggests a very different perspective. Amphetamine was first placed on sale in Sweden in 1938, three years after its introduction into the practice of medicine in the United States. 1 The Swedes, however, were much more prompt in recognizing the potential hazards of the drug; in 1939, though sales were still very small, they placed amphetamines on the list of drugs available only on prescription–– a step that the United States did not take until 1954. Swedish physicians apparently found the drug useful, for by 1942 they were prescribing it to about 3 percent of the population. 2 Some 6,000,000 doses were prescribed during the year. A survey 3 indicated that most Swedish users were using amphetamine sensibly and in moderation: 140,000 were occasional users, taking four amphetamine tablets or fewer per year. No doubt, like Americans at the same time, they used amphetamine on rare days when they had to work longer than usual, or faced some extraordinary challenge, or woke up depressed and out of sorts and needed something to "pull themselves together." 60,000 others were also occasional users, but with somewhat greater frequency; their usage ranged from five times a year to twice a month. 4,000 users took amphetamine only once a week or so, but often took two or three tablets at a time–– perhaps for a Saturday-night "high." 3,000 users might be described as "borderline." Their frequency of use varied from several times a week to daily–– and they sometimes took from five to ten tablets in a single day. 200 users–– less than a tenth of one percent–– could properly be labeled "abusers." They took from ten to a hundred or more amphetamine tablets a day, more or less regularly. This spectrum of use suggests that amphetamines prescribed by physicians are drugs with only a modest potential for misuse. The figures may be contrasted with the estimated 10 to 12 percent of alcohol users who become problem drinkers or alcoholics, and the estimated one percent who become skid-row alcoholics. The Swedish authorities, however, were not comforted by such statistical comparisons. Warnings against the amphetamines were circulated to all practicing physicians–– and in 1944 the prescribing of amphetamines was placed under much more rigid legal restrictions. The new restrictive measures, of course, engendered nationwide publicity and once more alerted Swedes of all ages to the remarkable effects of the amphetamines. Thus at a time when these drugs were still known to only a minority in the United States, in Sweden they had achieved the status of near-universal familiarity, as a result of repressive measures. The first effects of the tighter restrictions appeared to be favorable. "Sales dropped for a few years by one-half," 4 Professor Gunnar Inghe of the world-renowned Karolinska Institute in Stockholm reports. But, as in the United States and other countries where the authorities rely on drug repression, undesirable side effects of the repressive measures made their appearance: increased use, a black market in amphetamines, the rise of an amphetamine-centered subculture, and the appearance of the speed freak." In the middle of the 1940s, [Professor Inghe continues,] it became obvious that misuse of central stimulants was now taking shape in gangs on [a] collective basis, at first especially among Bohemians, writers, actors, musicians and other artists and their sycophants and admirers. At first there was only oral administration. Among the misusers there were however a few morphinists, and probably in the early fifties subcutaneous and later intravenous injection of central stimulants started. These forms of administration have gradually become the most common among large-dose addicts. Misuse had now very obviously started spreading among asocial and criminal groups, among whom it can be said to have become endemic. In the middle of the fifties instances of breaking into chemists' shops, forging of prescriptions, etc. became common, the number of narcotic gangs increased and the seizing of smuggled tablets started. 5 Each of these incidents, of course, was accompanied by widespread publicity; indeed, the antiamphetamine publicity in effect took the place of paid advertising in maintaining a booming sale of black-market amphetamines year after year. The drive against smuggled amphetamine tablets no doubt helped raise prices and attract more smugglers, as in the United States. High prices also encouraged the switch from oral use to mainlining. In addition, however–– as in the United States–– repression and high prices led to the popularization of amphetamine substitutes: cocaine in the United States, phenmetrazine (sold under the trade name Preludin) in Sweden. Preludin was introduced into Sweden in 1955. * "It was observed at once," Professor Inghe reports, "that this drug produced euphoria. It became rapidly popular in addict circles in preference to other central stimulants which it replaced." 6 The parallel between Swedish and American policies and results is thus complete. The only difference is that the Swedes were far ahead of the Americans. The Swedes instituted antiamphetamine measures somewhat earlier–– and thus popularized both the amphetamines and amphetamine substitutes somewhat earlier. * It is used in the United States as a "diet drug." In 1959 the Swedes took the next obvious step. They subjected Preludin to the same strict legal controls as amphetamine, morphine, and heroin. A special prosecuting attorney was also appointed to concentrate on drug-law enforcement. "Since then, however," Professor Inghe reports sadly, "illegal import of Preludin has increased steadily." Originally "it came from the Boehringer factories in Germany." When the Swedes put economic and diplomatic pressure on the German government–– much as the United States has been pressuring the Turks and the French to cut off opium and heroin trafficking–– the smugglers switched their source of supply from Germany to Spain. Pressure on Spain was also effective. "Next came the smuggling of Preludin tablets from Belgium and various other countries, notably Italy," 7 Professor Inghe states. Other amphetamine substitutes also became popular. "Phenmetrazine [Preludin] is still the most in demand," Professor Inghe reported in November 1968, "but amphetamine, methamphetamine, dexamphetamine, methylphenidate, and other drugs are used as well. Recent reports tell of an increasing abuse of weight-reducing preparations, which include diethylpropion [Tenuate, Tepanil]. . . . The misusers themselves have an incredible capacity for rapidly progressing to new euphoria-inducing preparations, which apparently without exception can prove both habit-forming and dependence-forming." 8 By November 1968, as smuggling controls over amphetamines and amphetamine substitutes became somewhat more effective, the Swedish black market, like the American black market a few years earlier, took the next obvious counterstep. As noted above, the raw materials out of which the amphetamines are made are common industrial chemicals, used in great quantity in ordinary manufacturing processes. Sweden imports these raw materials. A slight increase in such imports is very hard to detect–– yet sufficient to produce vast amounts of amphetamines. This, Professor Inghe told an international amphetamine conference in November 1968, was beginning to occur in Sweden." * This means that some part of the market now, as far as one can judge, is covered by illegal factories, at least partly situated in Sweden." 10 The Swedes had belatedly discovered the "speed labs" which had begun flourishing in the United States six years earlier. * According to another Swedish source, however, clandestine speed labs had operated in Sweden for some time; they simply escaped official attention until 1968. 9 The Swedish response to this 1968 development was to ban altogether –– except for a few uncommon conditions–– the prescribing of amphetamines and related drugs. Special permission was required from the National Board of Health and Welfare for each patient receiving amphetamines; during the second half of 1968, only 343 such permissions were granted for the entire country. The sensible and occasional use of amphetamines under medical supervision was thus effectively curbed–– but a visit paid Stockholm in November 1970, in the course of research for this Consumers Union Report, indicated that the black market still flourished. Amphetamines and other stimulants were freely on sale in the city's large black market behind the Central Station–– a region of impressive new skyscrapers roughly comparable to New York City's Park Avenue in the fifties. The Swedes are convinced that they have today the worst amphetamine problem of any country on earth–– and they are almost certainly right. The outcome of Swedish efforts to suppress amphetamine misuse between 1942 and 1970 can now be objectively evaluated. Prior to the repression, 240,000 Swedes received amphetamines legally on prescription from their physicians and used them occasionally and sensibly to help meet the minor crises of life–– chiefly overtime work and feeling out of sorts or depressed. This occasional legal use of amphetamines has now ended. Yet the "abusers"–– 200 in 1944-–– had by 1970 become an army estimated at more than 10,000–– and many had become mainlining speed freaks. The question inevitably arises whether Sweden might not have been wiser in 1944 to try, quietly and without publicity or publicized warnings, to reduce the number of its "serious" misusers from 200 to 150 or perhaps even 100, rather than trying to "stamp out amphetamine abuse." One more parallel between the Swedish and American experience and between heroin and the amphetamines–– deserves mention. Because the United States has by far the largest heroin problem on earth, Americans also have the greatest number of heroin experts; at meetings of the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and other international agencies, the United States urges other countries to follow its lead in repressing the traffic in heroin. Other countries, looking at the results in the United States, are naturally loath to comply. The same is true of Sweden and the amphetamines. Through the years Swedish delegates to international conferences have urged that other countries also launch nationwide drives against the amphetamines, place them under the same controls as heroin and morphine, and curb international smuggling. Since the Swedish experts have had the longest and most extensive experience with amphetamine abuse, they consider themselves the best-informed experts. Other countries, however, have proved understandably reluctant to set off down the path that, beginning as early as 1944, led Sweden to its current amphetamine situation. But if the facts are as here presented, what of the story, circulated in the United States for several years, that the Swedes have been tolerant of the amphetamines, have given them away free to addicts, and are suffering an amphetamine disaster as a direct result of this toleration? The facts are quite simple and uncontroversial. In 1965, after Sweden had exhausted all repressive approaches to the amphetamines and amphetamine substitutes, a group of physicians applied for permission to supply modest numbers of amphetamine users with amphetamines as a research project. Permission was granted, subject to the condition that no physician supply more than 10 users. Two physicians exceeded the limit, so that as many as 250 or 300 users may have been supplied with amphetamines in the course of the project–– 250 or 300 out of an estimated 10,000 amphetamine abusers at the time the project was launched. The project gave added reason to conclude that an amphetamine maintenance program has little or nothing to recommend it, and it was abandoned after two years. Thus, Sweden's amphetamine problem has been blamed in the United States on the experimental prescription of amphetamines to a few hundred users in a dispensing project that followed rather than preceded Sweden's amphetamine explosion. Japan, like Sweden, experienced an epidemic of excessive amphetamine use after World War II According to reports by Japanese and American observers, 11 Japan successfully curbed this epidemic by law-enforcement methods–– sweeping arrests, stiff prison sentences and curtailing supplies. If true, this marks one of the few victories of law enforcement over drugs in the history of drug use. No on-site review of the Japanese experience was made, however, in the course of research for this Consumers Union Report; and no objective evaluation of the Japanese experience was found in the medical literature available in English. Nor have we found any cogent explanation of why law-enforcement methods that proved counterproductive in the United States, in Sweden, and in other countries against other drugs as well as the amphetamines–– proved so successful in Japan. Whether, on closer scrutiny, the Japanese amphetamine stories circulating in the United States might prove as misleading as the stories emanating from Sweden, is an issue of considerable importance which warrants further inquiry. |
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druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cu40.htm Chapter 40. Should the amphetamines be prohibited? Why shouldn't the amphetamines be banned altogether, as in Sweden except, perhaps, for a few essential medical purposes? Like all such prohibition proposals, this one is highly rational. It is the ideal solution to the speed problem and to the amphetamine problem in general. The only possible objection that can be raised against banning amphetamines is that, like alcohol prohibition and heroin prohibition, it won't work. To evaluate the likelihood that amphetamine prohibition will work, let us examine in more detail the ways in which amphetamines are manufactured and marketed in the United States today. Before the Federal Drug Abuse Control Amendments of 1965, illicit speed labs had to compete with diverted legal tablets priced at wholesale as low as thirteen or fourteen tablets for a penny–– 75 cents per thousand. When enforcement of the Drug Abuse Control Amendments at least partially dried up those low-priced legal supplies, the door was opened for profitable illicit manufacture on a far larger scale. Dr. Roger C. Smith's unpublished 1969 report, "The Marketplace of Speed," supplies some of the details for the San Francisco Bay area. "A speed laboratory," the Smith report notes, "may range from a well organized, highly efficient operation, capable of producing five to twenty five pounds [from about 225,000 to about 1,125,000 ten-milligram doses] of speed per week consistently, to a kitchen or bathroom in a small apartment, producing less than an ounce per week, to a college chemistry laboratory where a student produces speed only occasionally, when he needs money or feels that the chances of detection are slight.... They usually operate in secluded areas well removed from neighborhoods of high use. This pattern has also been described as typical of operations in the Midwest and East Coast." 1 The very large labs, the report continued, have skilled chemists and a reliable source of the chemical precursors required to manufacture speed; these precursors are standard chemicals that have a wide variety of industrial uses, and have until recently been readily available from wholesale chemical supply companies and from other suppliers. During the past few years, narcotics officers have checked the records of these companies for clues that might lead to the speed labs, and some labs have been "busted" as a result. The surviving labs have therefore developed subtle indirect ways of securing their raw materials. One informant described how he secured precursor chemicals for a friend who was setting up a lab: I just walked into this store ... it's a funny kind of store. Two old people work there who are about 50 years old, and they look at you and smile and say "what would you like?", and you would say that we want P-2-P [phenyl-2-proponol] and so on, and you would just run down the list and they would say "fine, come back in two days," and you would have to leave half the money as a deposit, and you could come back in two days and there they were, along with 20 other orders lined up on the floor, right in the middle of the store. These two people knew what was going on, because one time we went in there and the people asked how the crank [speed] was coming . . . completely blew my mind, seeing this sweet old lady asking how the crank was coming. . . . This world is getting pretty heavy. 2 "The cost of production," the Smith report continues, "is directly related to the source of chemicals. In a large laboratory, producing from 10 to 25 pounds per week with a steady source of supply, the basic cost may be $50 a pound. 3 This is slightly less than the wholesale price of legally manufactured amphetamines–– 75 cents per thousand for five milligram tablets, or about $70 per pound. "In a small operation, making a pound or less per week, buying chemicals from street sources, the cost per pound will exceed $200 ." 4 This raises the raw-materials cost per dose to almost a third of a cent. In the speed black market, as elsewhere, volume counts. After a while, knowledge of how to manufacture speed spread from chemists to the laymen who worked with them and watched their techniques closely. By 1969 Dr. Roger C. Smith was able to report: "The lowlevel chemist is often a speed user, often without any formal training in chemistry, who learns the process ... by working with a more experienced chemist or by following a 'recipe' which can easily be obtained in the speed community." 5 As an example, he cited a fifteen-year-old girl "who had operated her own speed lab in the Haight-Ashbury." Asked how she learned the technique, she replied: I moved into this house with a friend of mine in Seattle and this guy was making it in the bathroom, and I'm very interested. I like to learn things, so I just stayed up with him on three different nights and he would go through all the steps and I would write down how to do it. And he taught me and the next time I helped him do it. We did this around five times and I learned a lot. I can do it now, and I know most of the chemicals. I have all of it written down and I have to go by it, the temperature and everything. I couldn't remember it all, it's too complicated. And people think it's easy to do, but it's not. 6 [Italics in original] The way in which black-market speed is clandestinely manufactured is relevant to the problem of illicit drugs in general. LSD can be similarly manufactured in "bathtub labs," at low cost and in enormous quantities. The possibility that THC–– an active ingredient in marijuana might be clandestinely manufactured is reviewed in Part VIII. That synthetic heroin, or a wide range of synthetic heroin substitutes, might also be turned out clandestinely is an ever-present possibility. Nor should one ignore the possibility that new psychoactive drugs, more potent and more hazardous than any now known, may sooner or later emerge from bathtub labs. The two essential preconditions for the success of the clandestine laboratories are the banning of legally manufactured drugs and intensive policing of the ban. But even if all the amphetamines on earth, clandestine as well as legal, were eradicated forever, not very much would be accomplished–– for many users would turn (indeed, some already are turning) to cocaine again. |
If that's your concern, then the only drug you should spend any time worrying about is alcohol. You are at least ten times as likely to be injured by some fool on alcohol than on any of the illegal drugs. |
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I knew I should've saved that "aww jeez not this shit again" pic. I'm headed over to hightimes.com to see if I can find some firearms related threads. If they don't have any I'll start a poll thread titled "which round to protect my pot plant?". Site Staff, start a Pot forum. This is getting like the religious thread days... |
It would be more appropriate to have a Prohibition forum. |
That's how I see it. |
Only because a much greater portion of the nation uses alcohol, because it's legal. Legalize Meth... and see where you get. Sch-ta-tis-ticks... dey are my fwiend! |
Nope. Just FYI, according to the US Department of Justice, alcohol is the only drug with any real connection to drug-induced violence. You can read their report at Psychoactive Substances and Violence Alcohol accounts for about half of all deaths from auto accidents, homicides, drownings, and fires, and about sixty percent of all sexual assaults on children. Alcohol wins all the prizes for dangers on both a total basis and per-capita based on users. |
All the more reason to come up with a birth control method for men, specifically as a requirement for welfare. Hey, it's a better sell than messing with a "woman's right to bear children". Homie, if you want to lay around and eat/fuck/sleep for a living, you are NOT going to be allowed to reproduce. Period. Dave |
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Well, it seems as though the "legalize it all" folks are here, and the "booze is just as bad (or worse), ban everything!" camp is being represented, so I guess it'll piss everyone by holding up my little "HAVE SOME COMMON FUCKING SENSE" sign. C'mon people, we've been retreading this subject since "Dragnet". |
You must have wandered into the wrong thread. Meth users don't do much eating, sleeping, and laying around. Quite the opposite. |
Read the stuff I posted. (I know it is long and challenges your attention span, but try, anyway.) It was legal in the US at one time. It didn't become a major problem until the government started campaigning against it. |
I think you missed something. We are the "prohibition doesn't solve anything" folks. You know, just like alcohol, guns, etc. You don't have to like alcohol to recognize that alcohol prohibition was a complete failure. |
You are a flippen idiot. Do yourself a favor and overdose on crack |
If you're trying to protect me from stupid people you'd be more effective tightening up the driving regs. 
but they do a lot of fucking and mega doses of it in short order would solve that problem too. |
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Meth is NOT a naturally occuring substance unlike marijuana. As previously noted, to get Meth, you have to mix all manner of vile, dangerous and deadly chemicals. To get marijuana, all you neet is seeds, dirt, and sun, The Lord does the rest. I'm thoroughly convinced that the reason Marijuana is picked on so frequently by .GOV is due to it's natural proliferation. It's much harder to get your cut of a "Vice" when it is easily grown in anyone's back yard. In quantities, it is much more difficult to make (and therefore much easier to monitor and tax) alcohol and tobacco, plus both of these industries have strong lobbies that keep them in the Governments pockets. |
Right, only natural drugs, like pot, opium, peyote, and... 
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Just curious, but have you ever heard of any social problems tied to the use of peyote? |
My opinion is it is hypocritical to advocate one drug while condeming another. If Tobacco, alcohol, and adderall are going to be legal than methamphetamine certainly should be too. As far as "dangerous" illegal drugs go, cocaine kills many more than meth. |
Pucking Fotheads. |
Yes, the whole Indian thing was a social problem. That's taken care of now though. |
Just for the record, I don't "advocate" any drug. I advocate sensible regulations.
It is hard to argue with that.
How many is that? Just so that we have a number to judge relative hazards. |
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I like porn and strippers, two industries that would suffer greatly if not for meth. You like those patinum blondes with big real boobs but little bodyfat? That's the crystal meth diet plan. Body by crank. Other industries that would suffer without methamphetamine would be roofing, tile setters, landscaping, and long haul truck driving. Given a pick I would rather be around a tweaked out stripper than a baked dredlocked hippy anyday. |
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The Meth problem is created by prohibition. Meth is no ones drug of choice, it's just the drug that can be manufactured out of available substances. Decriminalize coke and see how many new meth users there are, not many would be my guess. People are going to use, prohibition results in higher potency ( do to weight based sentencing and concealability issues) and more dangerous substitutes. You're right Meth is a horrible drug, it destroys people. However you feel about the merits or demerits of pot or other drugs, at some point you've got to look at the current situation (gangs, highest percentage incarcerated in the civilized world, huge black market that can't be taxed and funds criminal and terrorist organizations, threat to law enforcement and general population due to secrecy and turf wars over control of that black market) and ask yourself if prohibition is worth it. At a minimum, we should legalize growing a few plants for personal use and destroy the black market for MJ. |
Experianced stimulant users prefer meth becuase it's more bang for their buck. Only people who attach a social stigma to meth, as a sleazy drug, tend to prefer cocaine. |