In the early summer of 2006, a report was released bearing the surprising message that the methamphetamine problem in the United States had been “grossly overstated,” and that the meth “epidemic” was more a result of overheated rhetoric and misunderstanding about the use of the drug than it was a real issue. According to Ryan King, policy analyst of The Sentencing Project and author of the report, meth is dangerous. But he went on to state that it is among the least commonly used drugs in the U.S., with rates of use remaining more or less stable since 1999, and actually dropping among teenagers.
The Sentencing Project is a not-for-profit advocacy group devoted to, in the words of the mission statement on their web site: “working for a fair and effective criminal justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing law and practice, and alternatives to incarceration.” The introduction to the site’s Drug Policy page explains, “Sentencing policies brought about by the ‘war on drugs’ resulted in a dramatic growth in inmates convicted of a drug offense. At the Federal level, prisoners incarcerated on a drug charge make up more than half of all inmates while the number of drug offenders in state prisons has increased thirteen-fold since 1980. Most of these persons are not high-level actors in the drug trade, and most have no prior criminal record for a violent offense.” In light of these issues, it is not surprising that The Sentencing Project would have an interest in taking a closer look at all issues related to drug arrests and convictions, including the meth problem.
Ryan King stated that misunderstanding of the meth problem (including frequent and misguided comparisons to crack cocaine) has thus far led to poor decisions about how to spend limited public dollars fighting drug addiction. Citing statistics compiled by the government, which included a 2004 survey that estimated meth was used by only two-tenths of one percent of the U.S. population, King pointed out that four times as many people use cocaine regularly, and thirty times as many use marijuana. And a separate survey of high school students showed a thirty-six percent drop in meth use between 2001 and 2005.
Although the report acknowledged that meth is more widely used today than it was a decade ago, data from the jail populations of a handful of cities on the West Coast revealed what King called a “highly localized” problem. For example, among men arrested in Phoenix, 38.3 tested positive for meth. In San Jose, California the figure was 36.9, in San Diego 36.2, in L.A. it was 28.7, and in Portland, Oregon 25.4. Nationally, however, a mere five percent of men who had been arrested had meth in their systems – whereas by contrast, thirty percent tested positive for cocaine, and 44 percent for marijuana.
King also wrote that treatment programs for meth have been portrayed inaccurately, with the news media as well as the Bush administration’s meth control strategies conveying a clear message that meth addiction is almost impossible to treat. Yet, King said, treatment programs in fifteen states have had promising results.
“Mischaracterizing the impact of methamphetamine by exaggerating its prevalence and consequences while downplaying its receptivity to treatment succeeds neither as a tool of prevention nor a vehicle of education,” King wrote, calling for a more tempered approach to the problem. The best strategy for dealing with meth, he said, was to keep the focus on local trouble spots while using federal money to strengthen and expand treatment programs.
King’s call for a more sane and balanced drug policy is certainly valid. Yet – with all due respect to him as well as to others engaged in the difficult but necessary work of trying to bring some sanity into the dialogue about drugs – basing an assessment of the meth problem, even in part, on male prison populations simply does not result in the most accurate picture. This is particularly so in light of the fact that meth has been embraced with ever greater frequency by members of the more privileged demographics – among them, many women – who will probably never see a minute of serious prison time. Not to belabor a point, but Lucille is one of these “privileged” sorts, and she is far from unique.
King is not the only person to weigh in with a somewhat contrarian view of the meth problem. In an “Editor’s Choice” letter written in response to an article appearing on Salon.com in August of 2007, one J.C. Miller wrote:
Meth and its hyperbolic and often mythological treatment in the media serve indispensable functions, functions previously served by ecstasy, crack cocaine, cocaine, heroin, and before that marijuana. In each case, a legitimately dangerous and addictive substance becomes largely identified with an easily marginalized population of users, and then serves the critical need of distracting attention from normalized use of other equally harmful, addictive substances whose social costs are orders of magnitude more devastating – alcohol, nicotine, and food.
The difference, of course, is that the far more socially damaging substances are the drugs of choice of individuals who are in positions to normalize their use, while writing and consuming horror stories about this decade’s new psychotropic threat to order and culture. A dominant culture killing itself by alcohol, food, and nicotine takes some comfort in waging a drug war against the white trash meth users.
But meth, as has been pointed out before, is not just a “white trash” drug, and it is misleading to equate it, even marginally, with marijuana or even cocaine. Commenting on J.C. Miller’s letter, Sara Tenenbaum on the Special Comment blog wrote:
Leaving aside the proper equation of meth and marijuana (by which I mean “none”), I also take issue with J.C. Miller’s assertion that the concern about meth use (and, as he said, before that coke, crack and junk) is largely a media-friendly spectacle that only serves to distract us from the increasingly damaging and normalized abuse of alcohol, nicotine and, now, food (oh woe be the day that food becomes a dangerous substance; we need it to live!!). This, I think, ignores the reality of what meth has done to this country. It has ruined lives, killed countless people (via overdose and also because of home meth labs gone horribly, horribly awry), and continued to infect the nation with its viral addiction. Students who are bright and talented and promising use meth to get through finals and find themselves dropping out to strip for meth money the following semesters. Professionals use it to get through difficult work periods only to lose their entire practices to addiction. Meth has been probably the most destructive drug in American history next to crack; it has destroyed the suburban and rural American midwest the same way that crack destroyed urban life in the 1980s and 1990s. It is not a media spectacle anymore than the anti-crack initiatives were media spectacles; it is big news because it makes a big impact.
As is the case with most hot-button issues, whether or not the meth problem is growing depends upon whom you ask. Take a drive through certain small towns in Montana, and you may be met by the sight of haunting murals painted on the sides of public buildings, starkly and poignantly portraying the tragedy of meth: not mere graffiti, but specially commissioned works that are part of a statewide initiative to tackle the problem head-on. Or you might see billboards and posters bearing the message, in one graphic form or another, that the effects of meth use are brutal and ugly. Glance at the statistics that fade in and out on a Flash animation on the Montana Meth Project’s web site, and the problem doesn’t seem so small. But, one might counter, that still points to a more or less localized phenomenon, as The Sentencing Project report cited earlier indicated. Yet the problem isn’t confined to Montana; there are pockets all over the U.S., particularly in the Midwest and Western states, where meth cuts a deep if not a wide swath. Certainly the problem is worse in some places than in others.
Montana, however, decided to launch a massive effort to do something about it. Conceived and founded by Montana businessman and rancher Thomas Siebel, with a stated purpose “to inform potential Meth consumers about the product attributes and actual risks associated with methamphetamine,” the Montana Meth Project’s goal is to substantially reduce methamphetamine use. And that is the beauty – and apparent effectiveness – of the Project’s approach: it doesn’t adopt a moralistic stance, nor does it employ the simplistic and worse than useless just-say-no line of attack. Very simply, its chief weapons are well-honed consumer marketing and advertising strategies. Meth, after all, is a consumer product. Show the product in its true light to the target audience, using compelling imagery, and you have a good chance of reaching them. At the core of Siebel’s brainchild is a high-impact messaging campaign, backed by extensive research, that presents a true and graphic picture of the effects of meth use. Most of the ads are aimed at young people. There is, for example, a picture of a squalid public toilet, with the caption: “No one expects to lose their virginity here. Meth will change that.” Or we see a young woman, intubated, immobilized, hovered over by emergency-room personnel; the caption reads, “Nobody expects to wake up here. Meth will change that.” A variety of powerful and often disturbing 30-second PSAs and numerous print ads offer similar messages.
In addition to the public awareness campaign, the Montana Meth Project mobilizes community groups throughout the state to spearhead education and prevention efforts, and also coordinates with local, state, and federal agencies in an effort to reduce methamphetamine use among Montana’s youth. According to the Web site, the Project is a success so far; not only do surveys reveal that attitudes about meth have changed, but actual usage is down as well in the state. In October of 2006 White House Drug Czar John Walters issued a release praising Montana’s efforts to reduce meth usage, and he mentioned the Montana Meth Project as one of the factors.
The aforementioned Salon.com article is a book review by Elizabeth Hand, who took a thoughtful look at a couple of 2007 entries on the meth-book market: No Speed Limit: The Highs and Lows of Meth, by Clubland author Frank Owen; and Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir by a reformed crystal-meth and heroin addict named James Salant. Hand praised the books, and shared a few thoughts of her own regarding meth. From her perspective, it’s not a non-problem at all. Further, the popularity of meth is very much a reflection of the times.
Make no mistake: Even casual users can attest that meth quickly becomes a horror-show drug. But it’s also one that dovetails neatly with our current national mood. Each era gets the drug it deserves -- or seems to, after the fact, when viewed through the smeary lens of pop history. Hence Coleridge and the other 18th century Romantics with their laudanum visions; Rimbaud and Verlaine sipping absinthe in 19th century Paris; the acid-tinged 1960s; coke-amped 1980s and the 1990s’ sunken-eyed, vampiric heroin chic.
Methamphetamine, a drug that embodies a Platonic ideal of paranoia, perfectly suits our national mood, when sleep-deprived employees are afraid to get off the treadmill of work for fear they’ll fall even deeper into debt, and sexual titillation seems both omnipresent and joyless. The erotic vampires who populated pop culture in the late 1990s and early naughts have given way to zombies stumbling or wanking or fucking their way through the detritus of the early 21st century in recent films like “28 Days Later” and “Shaun of the Dead.”
“Neither [Owen’s nor Salant’s] book suggests that this particular war is near over,” Hand concludes.
None of this is to dispute that there has been a measure of hysteria and some misunderstanding about meth, as has always been the case with any other recreational drug – including, of course, marijuana. Many of us have chuckled over the 1930s propaganda film Reefer Madness, which warned of the evils of “marihuana,” and many have reacted with equal glee or disdain to the warnings, a generation later, that smoking weed was the first step on a road leading inevitably to “harder drugs.” And most people are aware of the media’s tendency to focus on the lurid and the sensational: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Further, few would deny that alcoholism, nicotine addiction, and obesity are serious health problems caused by perfectly legal substances.
But meth in its various forms has been and remains a problem of sufficient magnitude that we cannot afford complacency. The numbers, as we all know, can be spun to prove or disprove just about any point of view. As tempting as it might be to embrace the idea that the meth problem is not so bad after all, and as deeply as many of us (myself, most of all) might long to turn the page forever on this scourge, to ignore the grip that meth has on contemporary culture would be sheer folly.