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The horrible fact is -- as I was forced to confess to a reporter who called me last week -- there isn't actually much of anything worth doing about meth. Its risks are hardly a secret, so the potential gains from a big negative advertising effort now are hard to guess. Production demands no special skill or hard-to-get chemicals, is highly decentralized, and is concentrated in rural areas where enforcement is scarce. But even if more enforcement resources were available, there's no particular reason to think we could make meth much more expensive or noticeably harder to come by.
"While the authors aptly point out that we do not know the precise mechanism of LSD's action, they also state outright that the research thus far clearly shows that LSD does not cause "organic damage, chromosomal damage, cancer, or birth defects. It is not particularly toxic..." The authors conclude that, "viewed strictly in the context of traditional drug-induced health consequences (measured in injury and death), LSD is less dangerous than most other illegal drugs."
Actress Barbara Streisand was one of those, who signed the above-mentioned petition. The actress confessed that it was LSD, which helped her survive the nervous breakdown, when the star discovered that her only son was a homosexual.Heh.
"There is one indicator that continues a steady climb, and that is the number of people receiving treatment for meth use. That number has increased more than five-fold in the past decade. "While the overall use figures are pretty much flat, we are seeing meth account for more than 20% of all drug treatment in some states, and I suspect that is what is fueling this," said Leah Young, a spokeswoman for the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. In 1993, there were 21,000 meth treatment admissions; a decade later there were 116,000," she told DRCNet. "Meth is taking up treatment resources like it never did before, and the states are paying attention to it because it seems to have burst on them out of nowhere."
But even the steady increase in the number of people in treatment for meth over the past decade does not necessarily mean more meth users are seeking treatment. Instead, alone with marijuana among all other drugs, a majority of meth users in treatment are there because a judge sent them there in a criminal proceeding. Nearly 51% of all meth users in treatment in 2003 were there as a result of criminal justice system referrals."
Key
Tot = Total patients
Self = Self/family-referred (%)
Year Tot Self
1992 14,381 33.6
1993 20,577 34.5
1994 33,084 34.9
1995 46,864 31.4
1996 40,221 28.5
1997 52,422 31.5
1998 54,469 27.0
1999 57,067 26.2
2000 64,883 27.0
2001 79,327 25.4
2002 101,490 22.4
2003 113,310 23.7
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That aside people I know that came from the more rural parts of Missouri say it really is the scourge that the media makes it out to be. They tell me, however, that the "feel good, take on the world" rush (and price) appeals a little too well to the cycle of poverty that is the drugs major clientele. Perhaps Newsweek should focus more on the causes for doing speed and less on just not doing it. What is this the 80s "just say no" again, have we really not come anywhere?
posted by geoff. at 2:01 PM on August 2, 2005