Politicians and law enforcers have been swept up in the hype over the latest narcotics fad, methamphetamines, writes columnist John Tierney writes in the New York Times. Like an addict, “They’re so consumed with drugs that they’ve lost sight of their duties. Like addicts desperate for a high, they’ve declared meth the new crack, which was once called the new heroin (that title now belongs to OxyContin). With the help of the press, they’re once again frightening the public with tales of a drug so seductive it instantly turns masses of upstanding citizens into addicts who ruin their health, their lives and their families.”
Tierney continues, “Amphetamines can certainly do harm and are a fad in some places. But there’s little evidence of a new national epidemic from patterns of drug arrests or drug use. The percentage of high school seniors using amphetamines has remained fairly constant in the past decade, and actually declined slightly the past two years. Nor is meth diabolically addictive. If an addict is someone who has used a drug in the previous month (a commonly used, if overly broad, definition), then only 5 percent of Americans who have sampled meth would be called addicts, according to the federal government’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health.”
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/opinion/09tierney.html?