Another article in the Economist, this one about methamphetamines. This is not an issue one hears much about in New England, perhaps because we’ve got our own problems with heroin. But this is a huge issue all over America, especially rural areas; it seems kind of like the crack epidemic that hit inner cities in the 80’s. And we’ve known that meth is an unbelieveably destructive drug: from first hit to the grave can be a matter of months:
VISITORS to acounty court in Salt Lake City, Utah, are shown photographs of a womanin her late 20s who has been arrested several times for dealing inmethamphetamine, a notoriously addictive and increasingly common streetdrug. She used the drug herself, and the photos show her ageing some 30years over a five-year period: cheeks sinking, eyes turning glassy,teeth rotting.
Awful stuff, which makes the anti-marijuana posturing and propaganda that we see every day on the MBTA posters ("#1 Hypocrite") all the more comical. Have you ever, ever seen a pothead with teeth like "rotting fruit" and otherwise at death’s door? Have you ever heard of someone dying from a pot overdose? No? Well, that’s because it doesn’t happen.
I’m not suggesting that pot is harmless — honestly, I don’t know what the long-term health effects are (aside from the hysteria peddled by the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy), and I’m open to responsible studies about its effects. (The correlated effects listed by the ONDCP are so riddled with confounding variables that it’s really difficult to say what its long-term effects are.) But as with sex education, you’ve simply got to give people — even and especially children — all the facts, including what you know and what you don’t know.
Yet, despitethe evident dangers of increased methamphetamine use, the federalgovernment’s anti-drug focus is once again on marijuana. Newspaperadvertisements are warning teenagers that marijuana users riskdepression, suicidal tendencies and schizophrenia. But MitchEarleywine, a psychology professor at the University of SouthernCalifornia, thinks the campaign may backfire once teenagers see littleevidence that marijuana causes such things. ?We lose credibility,? hesays. ?Then we tell them that meth causes your brain to shrink?which itreally does?and they don’t believe that, either.?
Truth isn’t the anti-drug — credibility is. The ONDCP would do well to be a little more generous with the truth, and to direct it against things that we know hurt and kill people with terrifying swiftness. It’s a question of priorities.
