Pot times
Methbusters Up The Ante In War Against Drugs
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1103/a09.htmlNewshawk: Empower Activists http://www.mapinc.org/donate.htm
Pubdate: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 METHBUSTERS UP THE ANTE IN WAR AGAINST DRUGS
Source: Paris News (TX)
Copyright: 2005 Paris News
Contact:
editor@theparisnews.com
Website: http://www.theparisnews.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/997
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm
(Methamphetamine)
Earlier this month, a federal judge sentenced three local residents to hefty
stints in prison for their involvement in the manufacturing, sale or
distribution of methamphetamine in the Paris area. These sentences
ranged from 12 years, seven months to 30 years. No "good-time
credit" is available because the convictions came in federal court.
The judgments, along with a number of others handed down earlier this year,
were the culmination of a coordinated, two-year-long initiative involving
local, state and federal law enforcement departments throughout the region
dubbed Methbusters by its organizers.
We applaud their efforts and urge a continuation of such efforts to combat
this most insidious of social evils. We are especially pleased to see
how the involvement of federal law enforcement personnel and resources have
upped the ante in the fight against methamphetamine.
According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, in 2002, more than 12
million Americans had reported using meth at least once in their life with
597,000 of these people have used it in the last month before the survey was
taken.
Once thought to be primarily a drug-of-choice for white men living in rural
areas, meth is rapidly spreading throughout the county and across all
demographic boundaries. Use of the drug causes deterioration of the
heart and blood vessels, especially the small blood vessels in the brain,
leading to cardiac irregularities, seizures, stroke and brain damage, all
possibly fatal.
The production of meth is just as dangerous. The production of one pound
of meth results in 5 to 7 pounds of toxic waste and drains millions of dollars
in clean-up costs from communities across the nation.
Lately, a number of pharmaceutical manufacturers have announced plans to
reformulate over-the-counter cold medicines, replacing pseudoephedrine - which
can be boiled down and combined with toxic chemicals to produce
methamphetamine - with phenylephrine, a structurally-similar drug that is
virtually impossible to render into meth. This comes on the heels of
action by several states and many communities restricting the amount of
medicines containing pseudoephedrine that can be bought by consumers and
tighter record-keeping on the part of retailers on the amounts and purchase
patterns of such products.
Making pseudoephedrine harder to obtain has already proved effective.
According to the ONDCP, states that have enacted such measures have seen as
much as a 50 percent drop in the number of clandestine meth lab operations.
Making pseudoephedrine even scarcer can only bolster the fight against meth,
and we urge all pharmaceutical houses to adopt these measures.
Putting drug runners away more frequently and for longer sentences, and making
the components of methamphetamine harder to get are just two of the weapons in
the fight against drug abuse. We must continue to teach people of the
dangers of drug use, making sure that the message get out to users and
potential users. To that end, The Paris News pledges its support to the
fight.
