when the status quo frustrates.

“Probably Not, But Then, That’s Idiotic By Itself.”

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

NPR had an article the other day, Is Phelps Being Judged Differently?. I caught it halfway through, so I didn’t hear the bit about what he was being judged for. Just that he’d been suspended from competitive swimming for three months, and advertisers were contemplating dropping him, and his position as the All-American Poster Boy had been irreparably tarnished and I’m thinking: what, did he do something incredibly racist? Sexist? Did he, for example, say, “Well, the black guy is president, but at least it wasn’t the woman?” Did he dismiss rapists as overeager frat boys?

No, of course not! Who would care about that? He, like, totally had a photo of himself taking a bong hit on Facebook.

Which was, you can perhaps understand, slightly underwhelming. Really? There exist people who care about this shit? Really?

And did anyone interviewed say, “Well, y’know, some people smoke pot occasionally. He’ll probably do it again. It’s probably nothing to get worked up over.” They did not.

08.02.2009 Drugs 4 Comments

Morals

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

I am pretty sure that Tory Health Minister Tony Clement has never had to live in a neighbourhood ravaged by drug-related crime. I’m pretty sure that he’s never had friends bounced between rehab and jail, unable to get proper treatment for their disease because drug use is considered a criminal, rather than a medical issue. I’m pretty sure of this because only a person so very, very sheltered from the effects of the War on (Some People Who Use Some Kinds of) Drugs could make the sorts of hateful, ignorant comments that Clement made yesterday:

“The supervised injection site undercuts the ethic of medical practice and sets a debilitating example for all physicians and nurses, both present and future in Canada,” he scolded in an address to the Canadian Medical Association general council meeting in Montreal. [...] “This is a profound moral issue, and when Canadians are fully informed of it, I believe they will reject it on principle,” the minister said.

Actual medical professionals (Clement is not one) know that harm reduction initiatives like Insite—the Vancouver safe injection site that Clement attacking in his speech—was save lives. They reduce the transmission of infections spread by dirty needs, reduce ODs, get drug use off the streets and away from the general public. Both Clement and his government don’t care about either the lives of addicts or the welfare of people in communities where drug use is rampant. They are much more concerned about appearing “tough on crime.”

After all, there’s an election coming up:

The new Conservative ad campaign picks up where Mr. Clement’s message leaves off with its call to “keep junkies in rehab and off the streets.” It includes pictures of the party leaders and asks which of them is on track to fight crime.

The text reads: “Thugs, drug pushers and others involved in the drug trade are writing their own rules. For too long, lax Liberal governments left gangs and drug pushers to make their own rules and set their own criminal agenda. Those days are over.”

The Tories have lower support among women, and pollsters for both Conservatives and Liberals have found that women and seniors feel vulnerable to crime. A promise to keep junkies away from children is a direct pitch.

Of course, women and seniors are also vulnerable to Tory policies, and have more to fear from our government than from unfortunate drug addicts. I can only hope that Clement and his party get tossed to the curb in the next election before they can do any more damage.

19.08.2008 A million ways to mortgage the future, Drugs No Comments

LSD Experiments on troops: Very, very wrong.

Saturday, April 19th, 2008

It is really really bad to do pharmaceutical experiments on soldiers. It’s obviously wrong to perform such experiments on anyone without really strong checks for safety and informed consent.

But, y’know, if the experiments have already been done, we may as well admit that the results are, in some cases, basically hilarious.

“But one hour and ten minutes after taking the drug, with one man climbing a tree to feed the birds, the troop commander gave up.”

Comedy—a more relevant concern than justice in every way? Discuss.

19.04.2008 "Science", Drugs 2 Comments

We’re going back…back to the FUTURE!

Friday, July 27th, 2007

reefer
Lookin’ forward to seeing it in it’s proper musical form

Chasity rings and modesty fetishes aren’t the only way to bring back the ’50s – don’t forget about the scaremongering over the tawdry evils associated with the devil’s weed.

Using marijuana seems to increase the chance of becoming psychotic, researchers report in an analysis of past research that reignites the issue of whether pot is dangerous.

The new review suggests that even infrequent use could raise the small but real risk of this serious mental illness by 40 percent.

If you smoke pot, even once, years later you might go keerr-aazyyy! So kids, when you’re out at the ‘sock hop’ with your ‘steady’ dancing to the tribal rhythms of your ‘rock and roll’ music, you must remember to Just Say No to Mary Jane and hereditary disposition to mental illness or any number of other uncontrollable variables that may affect the validity of the conclusions of this certainly-not-political review of previous scientific literature.*

“The available evidence now suggests that cannabis is not as harmless as many people think,” said Dr. Stanley Zammit, one of the study’s authors and a lecturer in the department of psychological medicine at Cardiff University.

The researchers said they couldn’t prove that marijuana use itself increases the risk of psychosis, a category of several disorders with schizophrenia being the most commonly known.

There could be something else about marijuana users, “like their tendency to use other drugs or certain personality traits, that could be causing the psychoses,” Zammit said.

…They found that people who used marijuana had roughly a 40 percent higher chance of developing a psychotic disorder later in life. The overall risk remains very low.

How shocking! How terrible! How wrong we were lo this past twenty years! Why it’s a good thing these heroically impartial doctors did this literature review now, just at the perfect moment to do something about it!

In the U.K., the government will soon reconsider how marijuana should be classified in its hierarchy of drugs. In 2004, it was downgraded and penalties for possession were reduced. Many expect marijuana will be bumped up to a class “B” category, with offenses likely to lead to arrests or longer jail sentences.

Two of the authors of the study were invited experts on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs Cannabis Review in 2005. Several authors reported being paid to attend drug company-sponsored meetings related to marijuana, and one received consulting fees from companies that make antipsychotic medications.

*What? Like the shorter DARE slogans are any more effective.

27.07.2007 "Science", Drugs, Filtered Propaganda, HUH!?, Politics 3 Comments

Does this mean if I changed the name of our blog to Heroin that we’d get busted?

Tuesday, May 8th, 2007

Ummm-um-um-um-um! You can’t sell a product with a naughty name in this country or else you get in big trubs with our dictatorial overlords. Just ask the makers of the energy drink name “Cocaine,” who have decided to temporarily halt production of the brand after receiving “threats” from the FDA.



Cocaine energy drink: now in powdered mix form!

Confession: other than my continuing fascination with the Tab Energy Drink, I have zilcho interest in the energy drink phenomenon. To me, they seem like a wussy stand-in for some blow… which is precisely why I like the idea of calling one what people really wish it was. Maybe in the interests of accuracy they should’ve called it “Cocaine, A Pale Imitation Of” or “LoserBlow” or “Emergency Buzz For When You And Your Dealer Are On The Outs,” but that’s more of a quibble.

The bigger issue ought to be why this is a real cause for concern for the FDA. Shouldn’t they be worried about industrial pollutants in our food and such? Shouldn’t actual ingredients be more important than some lame PR stunt by a company trying to carve out a niche in a flooded market?

What’s really the worst that could happen here, anyway? I guess some kids could assume there was real coke in the drink. Then they might start running around with their Izod collars up and Risky Business sunglasses on acting like Charlie Sheen in Wall Street because they think they’re hopped up on the real thing. But those kids would have to be morons, wouldn’t they? Because everyone already knows cocaine is illegal. And if it were ever legal, it wouldn’t come in a can. [Maybe a Pez Dispenser, but I'm saving those diagrams for the day when it *is* legal and I can make millions off people wanting the ironic satisfaction of flipping back Speedy Gonzalez's dome for some nose candy.]

And what “threats” could the FDA be leveling at the company? Are they gonna send an army of Christian pharmacists after them to pelt them with birth control pills until they change the drink’s name to “The Blood of Christ?” Honestly, I can’t imagine what “threats” they could be making.

We live in a weird country. Last I checked, alcohol is often more dangerous than cocaine or marijuana, especially when driving. Then again, so are cell phones. But not only are coke and weed illegal, invoking their names on a label is apparently verboten. Meanwhile, books like Fast Food Nation engender almost no response from the FDA, which is more interested in playing games with Plan B than meaningfully policing the food and drug industries.

I think I’ll change my name to PCP. That way, my business cards will have the extra cache of being contraband.

08.05.2007 Conformity, Drugs 10 Comments

As with all moral codes of practice, the Hypocratic Oath failed to prohibit cheese whizz

Tuesday, September 19th, 2006

I was rather surprised to see J Train in the comments at Pandagon whip this out

Shouldn’t this kind of thing put a doctor’s medical license in jeopardy?

I can’t imagine why. In general, unless a patient’s life or health is in immediate danger (and pregnancy doesn’t count), he’s under no obligation to write any prescription for anything. It’s his choice to make, just as it’s my choice to find another doctor, or (in my case) to not refer any of my patients to him.

Now why this logic surprised me, especially from someone who says they’re a doctor, is because this logic means that, due to how a person will not drop down dead immeidately upon contracting HIV, any time critical medications that could be used to stop a person contracting the virus in a short period of time immediately after they’re been exposed to potential infection is something which doctors are allowed to refuse their patients, even if refusing them and referring them on will lead to their patient contracting HIV.

But of course it is in fact perfectly moral silly heads. We know this because people who are very adamant about telling us that they’re Not, I repeat, NOT, Moral Relativists (and are definately not kantian nihilists) like those Dirty Jews Godless Liberals, also happen to hold the view that they are allowed to take away a women’s access to medication that will stop them suffering a life threatening medical condition, because they do not understand that there is a difference between an abortifacient and a contraceptive.

Cue Scientologist Pharmacists and Doctors refusing to prescribe anti-psych meds to schizaphrenics because they believe that mental illness is the result of psychic aliens. Sweet Chocolate Cthulhu (who commands me to take Plan B after I have a condom malfunction btw) forbid we let actual medical knowledge get in the way of made up theology now

And of course, the teeny tiny, ever so slight, basic medical fact that Plan B is not, never was, and will never be, an abortifacient is why of course I was some what perplexed by the next comment by J Train:

Is there any way we can send these pricks a complimentary copy of the Hypocratic (not hypocritic) Oath, as in FIRST DO NO HARM?

Oddly enough, the original Hippocratic Oath (which does not contain the line about doing no harm) includes a very specific line about not giving anything to produce an abortion. (Not to conflate abortion and Plan B.) This is one of the many reasons why the Oath is very archaic and is almost never used in its original form.

Emphasis mine because it’s just Sooo delicious, “Let me conflate Plan B and Abortion (Though I wouldn’t want to conflate Plan B and abortion or anything)”, Thank you Doctor J for that, do not let your blithering be affect by the fact that, due to the original Hypocratic Oath (not to be confused with any of the other, more modern Hypocratic Aaths, which do not, like women’s right to personhood, exist thanks to the wonders of sperm magic) having a strict prohibition against abortion, that stopping a woman from obtaining a contraceptive, like Plan B, is also prohibited, please.

Now no doubt some will object to pregnancy being compared to HIV though, and you would have a slight point, pregnancy is much less deadly than HIV, or Small Pox, or the 1918 flu pandemic, it is, I must admit, truly a pussy cat compared to many hideously deadly illnesses.

And to qualify that and to paraphrase Marx even; if by “people”, you mean rich white women with medical insurance, then it kills nearly no one at all.

If, however, you mean actual people, with functioning brains and everything, then it kills a few hundred women a year, in america, disproportionally black women too, and in fact kills women in an inverse proportion to how much pre-natal care they can afford during the pregnancy.

Which I believe, if my math holds, is slightly more than, say, erectile dysfuntion.

But again, I come up agaist the great wall of logic which means that medical decisions that are made doctors who actively refuse to accept modern medical facts, preferring instead an ad hoc made up reality in which Plan B dismembers and feeds to Joe Lieberman proto-humanoid lifeforms, and favors this pan-medical view in such a way that it threatens the life of their patients even, are not in any way criminally negligent.

Any Lawyers in the house? Is there a reason why we can’t sue (or whatever) a doctor for reckless endangerment or some such, given that this bullshit will eventually lead to some women who’s ethics do not allow her to abort, dying during an otherwise avoidable pregnancy? If neccesary we can declare this attack on women’s bodily autonomy “pornographic” and set Zombie Andrea Dworkin on it, but seriously, this seems like something we could work through the courts to defeat, why aren’t we?

19.09.2006 Bodily Autonomy, Contraception, Drugs, Filtered Propaganda, Moronic Religions, What Patriarchy? 7 Comments

Starbucks makes an unintelligent design decision

Friday, September 1st, 2006

Everybody’s favorite coffee underdog made a bold move to capture a new demographic: they quoted Wesley Smith from the Discovery Institute on one of their cups.

For the record, that quote reads:

The morality of the 21st century will depend on how we respond to this simple but profound question: Does every human life have equal moral value simply and merely because it is human? Answer yes, and we have a chance of achieving universal human rights. Answer no, and it means that we are merely another animal in the forest.

Wesley Smith
senior fellow with the Discovery Institute

Intelligent Design blogs are claiming victory in the field, probably more excited over a potential Starbucks endorsement than one from the Pope.

[Aside: Can I just say that when the Pope likes the ideas coming out of your country because they provide even better anti-science ammo than he could think up, your country has a problem? USA! USA!]

I suppose Starbucks has been unfairly slapped with a liberal-elitist image. Say “Starbucks,” and most people imagine a potpourri of Mac laptops, mock turtlenecks, and the gentle strumming of Aimee Mann. Apparently, Wal-Mart Coffee now hopes to attract the abacus/mock toga/Faith+1 crowd. That’s where the money is these days, right?

To help them in their transformation, I’d like to suggest some other Wesley Smith quotes they might consider for their coffee cups and muffin wraps. (more…)

01.09.2006 Advice, Big Business, Drugs, Godbaggery, Mutterings Of The Disturbed, Wankers 23 Comments

So Good

Monday, June 26th, 2006

Soooooo gooooood.

26.06.2006 Punkass!, Asides, Drugs, Wingnuts 4 Comments

Sharing Drunkle Stories With Ex-Cons and Junkies Whilst Trying Not To Peel Off My Tattoo

Tuesday, May 30th, 2006

The title pretty much sums up last week.

My dead bird tattoo* makes my arm itch like hell, in part because the tattoo artist insists on shaving my arm (why can’t they tattoo around the hair? for me?) and in part because every time I get ink I scab up like a muthafucka. Luckily, half of the other addictions counselors I met this week were former tattoo artists who gave me helpful advice on taking care of my dead bird. Nevertheless, I peeled off half my scabs and my arm looks like shit. Nervous habit. Back to the shop.

If you ever venture to an addictions counseling convention, you will find that many of your colleagues are also ex-cons and ex-junkies. This provides for lots of entertaining dinner conversation. I met a former shop teacher who was caught with two grams of blow on school grounds (oops) and a guy whose fourteen year old daughter helped detox him as he quit his crank habit (ouch). My main buddy for the week was a notorious drug dealer for roughly fifteen years and finally decided to quit during a ninety day stint in solitary. This is, believe it or not, the norm. My own mentor at the office once lost her car in another state and didn’t remember where she parked it when she woke up the next morning and found herself at home, two hundred miles away from the previous day’s destination. No addict wants to hear how not to do drugs from a squeaky clean clinician who has never taken so much as a recreational valium or forty — your credibility is gained in part from having gone through the recovery process yourself and come out on the other end alive, productive, able and willing to laugh at the insanity, and overall, okay.

I’m supposed to come up with a program out of thin air for drug-addled adolescents in my work community, most of whom are into huffing, the stupidest high I can think of. I myself have been privy to quite a bit of illegal substances, but never huffing. Dumbasses. I never really drank until well after my 21st birthday, at which point I made sure to make up that sober time and then some. But nevertheless, I’m hard-pressed to come up with some exciting and educational stuff for the kids because I really identify with their adolescent angst and boredom and part of me thinks they should get it out of their systems while they have the opportunity to have it wiped off their records on their eighteenth birthdays. I’d like to think that they’ll grow out of it like I did — my own extensive record shows nothing but a couple of traffic tickets at this point — but some aren’t so lucky. I had the privilege of good insurance and, oh, three times locked up in a mental institution because of my insistence on getting high and being a really, really bad liar. And a bevy of therapists because my parents are just that crazy (not I).

The real turning point for me was tricking myself into liking Narcotics Anonymous. During my final (to date) time in a boys’ home, I connived my parents into picking me up and taking me to a local meeting, because that was the only time I could get out of the damned home and chainsmoke. Plus, the old timers had fucked up stories. But soon I found myself among a bunch of like-minded souls and I kind of liked it. And then I worked some steps, and hey, I wasn’t so depressed anymore. And then there was no desire for the drugs because they clearly weren’t working in my favor, and ta-da, you had yourself a sixteen-year-old baby-junkie in recovery for his alarming prescription pill habit.**

I stayed clean for a long while continuing to go to NA and work the steps until I realized it was no longer necessary for me.*** Later on, I filled a once a year pot-smoking quota until I realized that weed is boring and I don’t need help being lazy anyway. And here I am, clean from my DOC for over ten years with only a few transgressions and nevertheless a serious, but healthy, obsession with fine wine.

But like my biker buddy once I decided to quit, I quit. No real temptation, no real trouble. The trouble for me, as it is with many addicts, is less of the drug and more of the change in lifestyle. Where do you go on a Saturday night if not the bar? Who do you call if not your old friends? The new playmates, new playgrounds gig is more than difficult, and I found myself pretty much alone and struggling with my recovery for over a year before I was able to make non-using friends and come up with shit to do other than drop acid and drive to an abandoned building in the countryside to watch the sun come up. And despite all the bullshit I had to endure and all the pain I caused friends and family, some of those times are still some of my favorite memories and best stories: Arrested on acid and telling the officer I was pretty sure they couldn’t arrest ovaries, caught stealing a car and refusing to let the officer take the puppy (whose puppy?) I was holding, wholheartedly believing that I could damn well change the world but forgetting the plan once the drugs wore off, and realizing the meaning of life.****

Right. And now I’m the boring old counselor telling kids to just say no and abstain from using drugs despite their small town boredom, their parents’ alcoholism and drug addiction, and their own maniacal depression. I feel for them, I do — but I also know how bad it can get, and thank my higher power I never got there. For that I owe the old timers that told me their stories, and in doing so, gave me a life I would have otherwise passed over in favor of oblivion.

I love a good recovery story. Share yours, among other thoughts, in the comments.

___________________
*Still not kidding. At this point you can see a series of faded spots where I dropped ink. Damn.

** My mother’s Xanax, mostly, but any pill would do. Later, lots and lots of acid. Lots.

*** The reliance on god and the group for many was obsessive and bothersome, my higher power being activism and everyone else’s resembling a Judeo-Christian god that I just couldn’t stomach. I find that atheists have a difficult time in step-recovery because of the insistence on relying on higher powers, in addition to many counselors pushing the god bit and refusing to validate a higher power that isn’t an omniscient being, in part because they believe that someone who picks a chair or the recovery group as a higher power just isn’t serious about getting clean. Regardless, clinicians are not supposed to be connected to groups like AA and NA, and an ethical clinician in recovery will find him or herself a home group that isn’t in the community they serve. This isn’t always the case, and sometimes non-addict addiction counselors will find ways to monitor the activities of these anonymous groups by mandating them in punitive Drug Courts and prying during therapeutic sessions. Just so’s you know, your therapist should never ask you anything about your time in AA/NA except whether or not you are attending and whether or not you think it’s working. Anything else is out of bounds because of the tenets of AA/NA, these tenets of emotional safety and anonymity being the reason that people are able to commit to such groups despite social stigma.

**** Brace yourself, this shit is deep: Life is fucked up. But it’s not just fucked up, it’s seriously fucked up.

30.05.2006 Drugs, Drunkle, Edumakashun 10 Comments

Wacky Tobacc-y saner than we thought

Wednesday, May 24th, 2006

Gentle/wo/men, light your fat ones.

It’s been a long-held belief by many avid users, but Metafilter posted the results of a study reported on WebMD that indicates marijuana smokers show no increased risk of lung cancer.

Despite this:

“We know that there are as many or more carcinogens and co-carcinogens in marijuana smoke as in cigarettes,” researcher Donald Tashkin, MD, of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine tells WebMD.

They found this:

“But we did not find any evidence for an increase in cancer risk for even heavy marijuana smoking.” Carcinogens are substances that cause cancer.

And they’re surmising this:

The answer isn’t clear, but the experts say it might have something to do with tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is a chemical found in marijuana smoke.

Cellular studies and even some studies in animal models suggest that THC has antitumor properties, either by encouraging the death of genetically damaged cells that can become cancerous or by restricting the development of the blood supply that feeds tumors, Tashkin tells WebMD.

In a review of the research published last fall, University of Colorado molecular biologist Robert Melamede, PhD, concluded that the THC in cannabis seems to lessen the tumor-promoting properties of marijuana smoke.

The nicotine in tobacco has been shown to inhibit the destruction of cancer-causing cells, Melamede tells WebMD. THC does not appear to do this and may even do the opposite.

So, uh, why isn’t pot legal again?

Any does anyone else think it’s odd there’s a David Geffen school of medicine in this world?

24.05.2006 Drugs 3 Comments

Oh, Schadenfreude, How We Love Thee!

Friday, April 28th, 2006

Rush Limbaugh has been arrested and charged with drug fraud.

Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh on Friday turned himself into the Palm Beach County Jail to face a charge of fraud for concealing information to obtain a prescription.

He was quickly released after posting $3,000 bond, jail officials said. Prosecutors alleged that Limbaugh violated the state’s “doctor shopping” law by getting four doctors to write overlapping prescriptions and failing to tell them about each other. Limbaugh, who pleaded not guilty, struck an agreement with the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office that calls for the charge to be dropped in 18 months provided that Limbaugh continues to seek treatment from the doctor he has seen for the past 2 1/2 years and must refrain from breaking the law during that period, Limbaugh’s attorney, Roy Black, said in a statement.

Limbaugh also will pay $30 per month for the cost of supervision and will pay the state $30,000 to help offset the cost of the investigation into the doctor-shopping allegations.

Prosecutors previously were investigating prescriptions that Limbaugh received from Florida and California doctors between March 2003 and September 2003, when he allegedly picked up 1,733 hydrocodone, 90 OxyContin, 50 Xanax and 40 time-release morphine pills.

28.04.2006 Celebrity, Drugs, Wingnuts No Comments

The Faces of Meth

Monday, April 24th, 2006

Allow me to paint a picture:

After college, a few twists and turns left me as a social worker in the rural Midwest. When I go on home visits, I look for propane tanks with brass fittings turned teal green — or any tank fitting gone to rust. I test the air for the smell of cat piss. I look for sunken cheeks and lesions on the faces and arms of my clients. I see tweakers everywhere — you begin to just know, or think you do. You look for foil covering people’s windows, excessive paranoia. You wait for people to admit that they’ve called an entomologist about the bug problem that doesn’t exist.

Don’t bother watching Spun. It’s not even that glamorous.

Take the biggest city for 100 miles and drive 45 miles north. You get to a factory town. Remove all the factories with corruption and embezzlement. Remove the grocery stores and leave a gas station for grocery shopping. Diminish the population with poverty and age. Reduce the population to less than 2,000. Leave behind hundreds of families with young children, high gas and electric bills, and nothing to do. Add worry about how to feed your kids. Add boredom. Add bars. Add alcoholism. Add poor farmers with a steady stream of anhydrous ammonia. Make those farmers willing to sell since they can’t compete with corporate and research farming operations. Add nepotism in both legitimate and illegitimate business. Tell the people to lift themselves up by their bootstraps.

I know the man who was the first big bust in the county I work in — a young father of three with a small, struggling business who started using out of boredom and started manufacturing out of necessity, both for his habit and his bank account. He’s facing ten to life. He recalls how easy it was to get the anhydrous ammonia (in the west they use red phosphorous), a fertilizer that is expensive and relatively difficult to get legally. In the field you just run up and tap it when no one else is around and try not to blow yourself up, or you buy it from a desperate farmer. This is one of the necessary components to manufacturing meth. It’s also the most dangerous ingredient.

Publications in Oregon and elsewhere have been accused of hyping up the so-called meth epidemic. It’s not sexy, but it makes a good story and an excellent scare tactic in favor of the lost war on drugs. And the use of meth in the gay community isn’t a factor here — there is no gay community. In larger areas, in busier districts, there are other things that register on the legal radar. Where I work, it’s all about busting drunk drivers and meth users. I want to be an objective party, but in this environment, who knows how to separate the fact from the fiction? The people come to me too late, after a mental illness has been exposed by or created by the meth. I see them after they’ve been referred by probation or parole. I see their kids after they’ve been removed from the home, not before. Nearly all of the families I am in charge of monitoring have been touched somehow, in some way, by the use or manufacturing of methamphetamines.

And why wouldn’t they use it? With no jobs, with nothing to do, you make the high and you get the high. You lose weight, fuck better, feel better, and make some money on the side. The short-term gains outweigh the long-term costs for most of these families, many of whom have no access to higher education, job training, or even basic transportation. It isn’t uncommon for fifteen to thirty people to be busted in a month’s time, from elaborate labs in the middle of nowhere to travelling labs in the back of someone’s car — who needs a Mexican drug cartel when you’ve got the next-door neighbors? The kids do it at school, the parents do it at home. People smoke meth like I smoked pot in high school.

But here’s what scares the shit out of me: Most people I work with who manufacture meth will only consent to treatment after, after, they have cooked the “perfect” batch. This perfect batch, of course, never happens. Thus, they are forced to me by the courts. While most people believe that drug addiction is cured only in the willing, research shows treatment is most effective when it is forced.

Most of the time, meth addicts don’t even get that. They get prison time. I get their kids. Corporations pulling out of the countryside get off with tax breaks and federal loans. Government denies a problem, hires more police. Social services cleans up the mess.

24.04.2006 Drugs 7 Comments