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Meth Problem Stops Garnering Press, Still Garnering Lives
> 11/10/2006 2:23:39 PM

We've visited another of our old favorites earlier this week when we wrote about the mental health crisis caused by Katrina, but that isn't the only national story that used to make headlines and now seems strangely absent. The wave of methamphetamine abuse and the crime it has left in its wake, continues to ravage this country. The graph below shows stats from 2005 for clandestine lab incidents, and they should frighten many readers, especially those in the mid-west.

As this dangerous drug is a keen area of interest to us, we've written a lot about the meth problem in the past (here, here, here, here and here), but when the drug dropped out of national news cycles, it dropped out of our coverage as well. For that, we apologize, because the problem hasn't gone away, and some believe it may even be getting worse.

Current Psychiatry, a peer-reviewed publication servicing the psychiatry industry, has an excellent overview in this month's edition that examines many facets of the methamphetamine problem, particularly from a clinical standpoint. The article looks at symptoms of abuse, strategies for treatment and everything in between. It's very thorough, and certainly a worthwhile overview of the state of methamphetamine abuse in this country.

As we've said in the past, the only way that we can hope to turn the tide of abuse is to present a unified and well organized front. Changes in laws that seek to control production are almost always met with adjustments in planning by makers and adjustments in the market by sellers. These types of approaches might be part of a solution, but they are clearly not an endgame. Only through education of the public, effective treatment of users and decisive punishment of sellers and makers will we begin to move toward a healthier place for this country.

Methamphetamine Clandestine Laboratory Incidents

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