Before viewing "The Meth Epidemic" on Front Line, you could imagine what the scares and the tragedies would be like from the stories to come. However you would be shocked to find the severity of such tragedies and their effect on society on a timeline of the mid 70's to the 2000's. Along the way you can also make note of how the dangers of methamphetamine affect the culture, demographic, geography, politics and economics in the United States. This story expose meth extensively in all of those major topics that come up in what is called the Making Of The Modern World.
The geographical area that affects the meth craze starts on the west coast specifically in Portland Oregon. Notably, the state of Oregon gets hit the hardest with the effect of this drug and research shows that 85% of property crimes in Oregon were due to the use of meth. Police officers in "booking" noticed a trend of users coming in and out. They also recognized throughout the months/years that the faces and physical appearance of users being arrested changed dramatically. Some adding more than 20 years of aging to their appearance, with sagging skin the face, rashes and scarring. This discovery brought about researchers and reporters like Steve Suo of the Oregonian newspaper making several interesting discoveries. This investigation and story was ongoing throughout the years and their discoveries helped break down the threats of the drug.
In a way meth users don't come from a specific or common culture, but as they fall victim of the drugs aftermath they share severe changes to their lifestyle. Their brains are being ruined by this drug and the ways their mind works or lack there of makes meth the most addicting drug of all. The culture that comes with being a user of methamphetamine or Crystal Meth points in the direction of crime, domestic violence, and families being split up. More common than you'd think, 50% of foster care children are there because at least one of their parents abuses the drug. In one specific case a young girl witnessed her parents having sexual encounters with each other and with other adults, her father would also abuse her mother and they would trip for days. She spoke of a time her father forced her to learn how to cook up the methamphetamine in their house exposing the young girl to deathly chemicals as well as forcing her to taste the finished product.
Along with the culture surrounding the use of meth is the demographic it targets. This is shockingly not something found in every major city around the country, while Portland is large it doesn't have the population of other major cities. Looking more closely at the ages and races of people doing the drug, the trend seems to be white males and females in there 20's and 40's. These users are multiple time offenders who literally fry their brains from extensive use. The drug sets of dopamine which is the rewarding part of the brain over little time, that part of the brain becomes the driving force for fulfillment, and more meth is needed to satisfy the brain.
There was an interesting discovery made by Steve Suo that the numbers of meth users checking into and out of rehab centers increased and decreased dramatically over the years. He then wondered why this was happening. His discoveries showed that the purity of meth throughout the years had changed dramatically, based on the availability of affedrine, the key ingredient in the drug. Battling laws and crackdowns the drug lords have had to find new lewpoles to get their hands on large quantities of this drug. Doing this takes time and that is why we see the up and down scale model, when the drugs on the streets are pure more people are addicted and need help, when they are bad people are less likely to get addicted and do not seek the help.
Affedrine is a drug that is legally used in the making of sudafedrine, a common sinus relief medicine that for years was unregulated. When U.S. legislature made the distribution of the affedrine to non-legitimate buyers the people who cook up the meth bought hundreds of these boxes and broke them down to make Crystal Meth. While this drug is now spreading easily from the west coast to the east coast, this trend is becoming noticeable and the politicians make it so a person can only purchase the drug 3 boxes at a time and was moved off the shelves and behind the counter. This worked for a while, moving the line on the chart again lower and lower until the meth labs would hire people to go into the every drug store in the area and buy the maximum amount of pills until they had enough to cook up. Now, with the biggest decrease in meth use in history in Oregon, the drug has been moved to a prescription drug only. This is a very obvious move for the rest of the country to follow in years to come and would have been done early if it weren't for the major pharmaceutical companies fighting it.
This fight to keep the sudafedrine drug on the shelves was all about the money that the pharmaceutical companies made from this. Economics has everything to do with major moves made like this in our country, even if it is at the cost of millions of lives. The Amezcore brothers had an illegal operation going in Mexico that imported 100's of tons of affedrine a year and made them 2 billion a year all without the DEA's knowledge. Now that the laws have been put in place to stop these practices, the scarcity of the drug and the purity of the meth has gone down dramatically.
After viewing "The Meth Epidemic" on Front Line, I have an in depth look at meth use and how it affects not only the physical appearance of someone but the mental state as well. This drug as it stands has the ability to be extinct because it strictly comes from chemicals, it can not be grown. If the government keeps advancing on the crack down of meth production and use they will succeed in eliminating the most dangerous drug on the market.
The Meth Epidemic- Front Line documentary.
