I try not to read corporate news, but I have noticed many a headline about a methamphetamine epidemic.

Bullshit? Maybe there are lotsa people cooking it up and using. But according to a Slate article by Jack Shafer (via the Drug Policy Alliance’s blog), there are some facts and issues that have gone unaddressed that are essential to understanding the harm of this epidemic and its historical context:

Some highlights:

if meth is America’s most dangerous drug, how many people has it killed? Newsweek doesn’t bother to explore the topic, perhaps because it’s so hard to pin down…If meth is really the most dangerous drug, you’d think the magazine would have provided some sort of body count.
[snip]
In 1965, the federal government tried to reduce the flow of legal amphetamines into the black market by passing the Federal Drug Abuse Control Amendments, but the law had an unintended effect…By cutting the legal supply to a trickle, the government signaled to drug dealers–and would-be drug dealers–that they could collect substantial profits from an established clientele if they started manufacturing amphetamines.
[snip]
In the mid-1960s, just before the government declared war on amphetamines, the average user swallowed his pills, which were of medicinal purity and potency. Snorting and smoking stimulants was almost unheard of, and very few users injected intravenously. Today, 40 years later, snorting, smoking, and injecting methamphetamines of unpredictable potency and dubious purity has become the norm–with all the dreadful health consequences. If the current scene illustrates how the government is winning the war on drugs, I’d hate to see what losing looks like.

Mike of Crime and Federalism blog shows us, with the help of a NYTimes article, one of the consequences of the meth hysteria and the resulting political pressure on the Administration, and by extension, law enforcement:

Think fast: What does it mean to “finish up a cook.” Too late: You’re under arrest.

That’s what several federal police officers said to Indian immigrants whose English-speaking skills, yet alone knowledge of slang, was imperfect.

The NY Times article:

When [federal prosecutors] charged 49 convenience store clerks and owners in rural northwest Georgia with selling materials used to make methamphetamine, federal prosecutors declared that they had conclusive evidence. Hidden microphones and cameras, they said, had caught the workers acknowledging that the products would be used to make the drug.

But weeks of court motions have produced many questions. Forty-four of the defendants are Indian immigrants - 32, mostly unrelated, are named Patel - and many spoke little more than the kind of transactional English mocked in sitcoms.

So when a government informant told store clerks that he needed the cold medicine, matches and camping fuel to “finish up a cook,” some of them said they figured he must have meant something about barbecue.

The Agitator knows the reason why there is an uptick in homegrown meth usage. Its the same reason folks used to make moonshine, and its one reason why we today have such a rich variety of cocktails:

A smart reporter, for example, might ask why we have meth in the first place. Could it be because more traditional amphetamines and narcotics are harder to get, thanks in large part to the Drug War? He might ask Drug War opponents if they feel the meth scare is as potent and widespread as media reports and drug warriors suggest. He doesn’t have to endorse these ideas. But he ought to at least give them some space.

. . . .

While talking about drug prohibition and the rash of meth stories, a reporter yesterday asked me if I would “even legalize meth.”

I think that’s a poor way of framing the question. It would be like asking an opponent of alcohol prohibition in, say, 1927 a question like, “would you even legalize bathtub gin, which is dangerously potent, and sometimes lethal?”

It’s not a fair question. Were it not for the Drug War, we wouldn’t have meth. Were it not for Prohibition, we’d never have had people drinking wood alcohol or bathtub gin. Both were created by prohibition. Both would soon go away if we adopted more sensible policies.

Humans will always want to get high, and they will always succeed, no matter how injurious to our bodies.

So let’s not only save money, but make money. We set up a government monopoly on the drug trade, and undercut any potential black market. We can eliminate the DEA. We can free up police departments to investigate real crimes. And there will be far less crime to investigate, as we will eliminate all drug-related violence and crime (no need to battle for territory, no need to mug people for money, etc.). We can stop building prisons. We can stop spraying fields (and poisoning humans) in South America. We can put the money into substantial support for those who go astray. Its utilitarian! Oy, I’ll save the moral argument for decriminalization for another day.

But these ideas are nothing new. We’ve seen the problems inherent in prohibition in the past. And we’ve been through it with drugs for a long enough time that there shouldn’t be any more doubt about the massive utilitarian benefits to a controlled decriminalization of currently illegal drugs. I just feel these ideas need repeating, as its obvious we still haven’t caught on.