Meth

On Thursday we watched a film about the harmful health, mental, and emotional effects that meth amphetamine can cause. The film also talked about certain statistics the drug has with crime rates, and addiction patterns. The meth epidemic originated in Oregon, when people slowly started to take this miracle drug that made them have an intense euphoric rush, with a come down that made them so depressed that they would go crazy yearning for the next batch. Meth is a huge problem for a number of reasons, but a main reason is because it can be made in the human household with pseudoephedrine; which is found in common cold medicines that used to be able to be bought on drug store shelves. People would start making meth using a certain method they refer to as “shake and bake” that uses just one box of cold medicine that can easily be purchased anywhere. The government started to catch on with the excessive cold medicine such as Sudafed that was being bought in Oregon, so they tried to at first regulate the purchasing of these medications to just 2-3 boxes per visit. But people were able to find ways around this and were still getting the ingredients to make this horrible drug. Property crime rates were going up when meth got big, and up to 85 percent of crimes were caused by meth addicts. Also, the reason that meth appears to be so addicting is because when good “pure” meth is being distributed on the streets it is much harder for a meth addict to stop the use of the drugs. Studies have shown that in all the states there is a similar chart showing that the peaks of meth use, as well as the lows all follow each other statistically. I definitely agree that meth amphetamine is an important health issue, which was neglected for a long period of time. Meth is something that will probably never go away, and it was easily attainable for a long time before pseudoephedrine became a prescription drug. The fact that this drug can cause body and brain deterioration, so many