You know that meth epidemic spreading throughout the nation? Well, it turns out, maybe it isn’t a spreading epidemic so much as a media creation. Observe:

So where is the wave of meth sweeping the nation and destroying communities? It’s on the cover of Newsweek so it must be true! Well, funnily enough it isn’t happening, and the data shows that the number of schoolkids using meth, people showing up in emergency rooms because of meth, and those reporting in the government’s own household surveys that they’re using meth, is the same that it’s been for 20 years. Here’s another excellent article in Slate debunking the whole epidemic myth.

So what has changed? Well it would be optimistic to think that people have realized the idiocy of the drug war, and the Administration has clearly come up against serious resistance to its stance about persecution of pain doctors and medical marijuana users. What passes for official drug policy in this country now centers on attacking marijuana use — and why wouldn’t it, as there aren’t sufficient numbers of users of any other drug to arrest 750,000 of them each year, and then justify the $30-$60 billion we spend each year on the “War on Drugs”. But unfortunately I doubt that the as misplaced focus on marijuana is the real reason for the outcry about meth. Instead we have to look to the main proponents of the war on drugs — America’s always hungry law enforcement agencies.

Thanks to Matthew Holt for his analysis over at The Healthcare Blog.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 23rd, 2006 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.