I will state this outright: There is no national methamphetamine epidemic. National and local law enforcement agencies have found a convenient new bogeyman with which to give the American public apoplexies of fear.
And it’s working; Americans worry about tweakers. Meth users are a scary lot, right? In fact, I can see one now: Ashen-hued with sunken eyes, he twitches and flails his gaunt frame like a big-mouth bass in the final throes of death. And those teeth; black, decaying stumps of coagulated motor oil rotting behind blistered lips. This man, nay, this Neolithic throwback, lives in a trailer or some other low-income housing. He’s white trash. Hell, he probably watches NASCAR.
And there are more like him out there, a lot more, and they are the scourge of society, the cause of myriad ills. Or at least that’s what we’ve been told. The meth epidemic is being framed as a moral issue, as something that is tearing the fabric of our society apart. It’s described as a plague, and epidemic and a cancer.
We are feeding off this panic.
And while we keep hearing about how Oregon is the most meth-fueled state in this grand meth-loving nation, most of the evidence is garbage. Last spring, the Willamette Week published a lengthy investigative piece debunking the Oregonian’s five-part series “Unnecessary Epidemic”. The Willamette Week story points out many of the fallacies of the meth-epidemic argument. For example, The Oregonian, happy to cite scarifying statistics, never made a distinction between one-time users, recreational users and addicts. Oregon meth use has actually declined according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Moreover, most of the pro-epidemic propaganda is based on treatment rates or arrest numbers (the two are actually intertwined, a result of courts forcing arrestees into treatment centers) and these numbers make an unconvincing case for an epidemic. They are simply not proof.
Frankly, the numbers are designed to confuse. The Eugene Police Department keeps arrest records of drug offenders, everything from heroin to pot. Meth, however, does not have its own listing; it is listed under “dangerous drugs” (which has the highest number of arrests) thankfully offsetting it from those safe drugs, like heroin.
The means by which the Legislature and local law enforcement are tackling the problem are counterproductive, expensive and intrusive. In 2005, the Oregon Legislature passed a law requiring pharmacies to store Sudafed and other cold medications containing pseudoephedrine behind drug store counters. The law passed through the Oregon House with a 55-4 vote. Though, to be entirely fair, former state Representative Kelley Wirth cast one of those nay votes; later in the year she would be arrested for possessing meth. The
conservative group Frontiers of Freedom has criticized state bans due to their lack of efficacy (at best 25 percent of meth is produced using
legally bought Sudafed) and their eroding impact on personal privacy. “Out of frustration and born of good intentions, politicians sometimes legislate just because they can,” said Kerri Houston, vice president of policy for Frontiers for Freedom, in a press release.
Now there is talk of creating a registry for meth users, similar to the sex offender registries that already exist. But why stop with meth? We could have registries dedicated to every perceivable drug offense. Wouldn’t you like to know if your neighbor has an Adderall addiction?
Lawmakers like problems more than they like solutions. If there is a continuous stream of problems at which to shake their fists and gnash their teeth then they can feel comfortable in the knowledge that they are appearing sufficiently outraged. Law enforcement agencies like to receive federal funding. And many media outlets enjoy recapitulating the words vomited out of any authoritative-sounding person in a suit. Wrapping a story in the vestige of a moral panic adds marketability. Of course, being critical of prevailing opinions also adds context, but that’s harder to do. That’s why this sort of moral panic will remain America’s drug
of choice.
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