by Charles Bowden We're in denial, says Charles Bowden. Americans can't seem to understand our illegal drug industry as anything other than a problem happening on the other side of town or across the border in Mexico. The real scope and impact of the drug business go unacknowledged, he writes in his latest montage of a book, and as a result "we are left with a history unwritten, one almost erased as soon as it happens to hit the page. This unwritten history takes place down by the river, on the fabled banks where two nations meet." [continues 1059 words]
Earlier this year, a methamphetamine lab exploded in a backyard shed in Iowa Park, a town just west of Wichita Falls. Instances of this type of explosion are on the rise in areas like North Texas, where meth labs have become increasingly common: Amateur speed cooks handling flammable substances will light a cigarette, or a thermostat-controlled heater will turn on, and suddenly the place is aflame. In the case of the Iowa Park explosion, the 20-year-old man who'd apparently been manufacturing meth inside the shed was badly hurt, with second and third degree burns over 50 percent of his body. Two hours passed before he was taken to the hospital, while his father attempted to clean up the lab. Asked by the Iowa Park police why he hadn't called an ambulance right away, the father replied that "he didn't want his boy in trouble." [continues 451 words]
Scenes From Rural America's Drug War Amphetamine and methamphetamine are simple molecule. Diagrammed on paper, amphetamine looks like a hexagon with a forked tail. Its skeleton is just a ring of six carbon atoms, with two more carbon atoms attached to the ring, and then a carbon and a nitrogen attached to the second of those.(1) Pencil in another carbon in the right place, and you have drawn methamphetamine. Various other stimulants look quite similar. Ephedrine, the active ingredient in herbal diet pills, differs from methamphetamine by just an oxygen atom-while those same atoms arranged differently would give you pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in many cold medicines. Slightly more complicated alterations yield the drugs 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (Ecstasy) and methylphenidate (Ritalin). Such conversions are not just possible on paper. [continues 7070 words]
