Pubdate: Thu, 04 Jan 2007 Source: Salt Lake City Weekly (UT) Copyright: 2007 Copperfield Publishing Contact: http://www.slweekly.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/382 Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n000/a446.html Author: Lorna D. Vogt METH REALITIES Thanks to Ben Fulton for recognizing Governor Hunstman's commitment to battling methamphetamine addiction in Utah. It is time to take a holistic and compassionate approach to meth by emphasizing treatment and family unity. But I do take exception to the characterization of meth as the "fiercest and most dangerous of all illegal drugs" that is not only physically devastating but also nearly impossible to treat. There is new research in the January 2007 Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment that reveals there is little difference between treatment outcomes for users of methamphetamine and other hard drugs. Inflammatory language like that is the reason why methamphetamine is America's latest drug bogeyman. That perception is not supported by the research literature, much of which can be accessed on the Harm Reduction Project's website (HarmRedux.org). It is easy to portray meth and the people who use it as dirty, disgusting and dangerous (think back to the words and images we used to describe heroin and crack cocaine when they were the "epidemic" drugs), but these portrayals can cloud our decision-making, causing us to create policies that will backfire or have disastrous unintended consequences. Thanks to the "crack epidemic," we have mandatory-minimum sentencing, thousands of children taken from their families and more money for incarceration instead of treatment. None of these policies stopped crack, and they won't stop meth. There is one big difference between crack and meth, however, and that is the communities it typically affects. Crack was the drug of poor, urban areas whose residents were mostly black. Meth is the drug of white and rural communities that are primarily lower income and in the middle of the country, although the drug is rapidly spreading across the nation and into diverse populations. The demographics of meth may change how we respond to it, but that says a lot more about race and class in America than it says about the drug itself. Methamphetamine is dangerous and difficult to treat but let's put it into perspective. Meth is not new--it is the most widely used drug in the world after cannabis. In the good old days immediately following World War II it was aggressively marketed to American women as "mother's little helper." The American military used methamphetamine-like drugs to keep soldiers moving through the boredom and exhaustion of combat. All of those moms and soldiers did not turn into hopeless addicts. Meth is a powerful stimulant that makes you feel on top of the world, at least for a little while. The drug is perfectly suited to our culture where production and performance--sexual, work and parental--drive us to work long days and believe that we have to do it all. The pressures on women, in particular, are intense to stay thin, keep up the house, take care of children, work a full-time job and be sexually attractive and active. Meth will do all of that, and more, in the beginning, which is not to dismiss the very real dangers of its use not only for the user but also for those exposed during production and to the fallout of addiction. These women are not demons roving our streets, neglecting their children and selling themselves to buy their next fix, although all of those tendencies can happen when people are in the grips of addiction. We need to distinguish between the drug and the drug user and address the complexity of the latter's life without hyperbole and distortion. We cannot use meth as the next convenient dumping ground for our fear of drug use or to satisfy our need to mete out tough punishment for those who don't measure up. Meth, like other drugs, is used to cope with life or for enjoyment, plain and simple. Like any other powerful and addictive substance, it has the ability to destroy lives. But the people who use it are not throwaways nor are they beyond help. We join Fulton in applauding Gov. Hunstman for recognizing that treatment that keeps families together is a great step in addressing what is undeniably a disturbing new drug trend in Utah. But in the process of congratulating ourselves for getting serious about meth, let's not forget our past or the world in which we live where expectations to do it all can overwhelm even the strongest of us. Lorna D. Vogt Harm Reduction Project deputy director Salt Lake City - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake