Meth In Perspective Page 2

Like most illicit drugs, methamphetamine is highly profitable. And because of the disparity in prices right now across North America, people calling themselves "M & M's" (meth movers?) make a rather tidy living just moving medium quantities of meth from one location to another. For example, the average price for a pound of meth in Texas is in the area of $ 12,500.00 and the average price for a pound in North or South Carolina is closer to $ 45,000.00 So until the price of gasoline reaches $ 27.00 a gallon, it's going to be pretty profitable to drive from Texas to the Carolinas with one or more pounds of meth in your vehicle. A similar trend is developing in Canada as well. And of course the chance of being caught when traveling domestically is infinitely smaller than crossing an international border.

The disparity in prices for methamphetamine throughout the world creates a profit potential for would-be dealers and smugglers that's quite mind-boggling. Here's a step-by-step scenario that is not the least bit exaggerated.

Buy three pounds of meth in China. It's not hard to obtain, and you'll only need $ 8,150 U.S. because meth is only six dollars a gram in China.

Smuggle the meth you bought in China to New Zealand, or have a "mule" do it for you.

Open up a bank account and deposit $ 1,057,422.00 U.S. in cash, which is what the meth sold for in New Zealand at current prices.

So ask yourself this. Is there a profit incentive involved here? Is the profit margin high enough that you could pay several people twice their annual salary to look the other way for five minutes? Are people going to do it, despite the risk? And if those risk-takers are ever caught, is it likely there might be others to take their place?

Obviously, the answer to all questions is "yes," and this shows the utter futility of fighting methamphetamine from a "supply-side" perspective. It's not just hard, it's impossible.

As for the local dealer, meth doesn't require that they slowly "develop" an end-user market, because existing dealers of powder and crack cocaine have no trouble converting their client base to meth, and if necessary during meth droughts, back to crack again. Meth and cocaine are both stimulants and the meth high is much longer and in most areas, meth is far cheaper than cocaine.

Even if you're paying top price for your meth as a dealer, meth is always profitable. That's because meth is extremely easy to "cut," or "step on" (dilute) as it goes along the supply chain, so you're always going to make money, even when you get "short counted" from your own dealer.

Unlike a consumer of marijuana, who might prefer to have the convenience of a steady supply, meth users are like crack users, they have to have a steady supply because they need the drug to exist. And as stated previously, even if the dealer temporarily runs out of meth, the user base will temporarily accept crack cocaine without much complaint.

In a general sense, most meth "buy-sell" transactions are conducted indoors, unlike crack cocaine transactions which are more likely conducted out in the open. That could be due to the fact that meth users are more paranoid to be out in the open, or that there are more transactions per day with crack - to be honest we're not really sure.

In addition, unlike a crack addict who is making small "buys" all day and all night, there are less actual individual transactions with meth because the high lasts so much longer. So from the dealer's perspective, that translates to less risk of being caught, more appeal in dealing the drug, etc. And meth can also be ingested in a variety of ways, so it's much easier to use meth in a work setting than many other drugs, particularly the type of work that is solitary in nature, or largely unsupervised.

As we've explained in the "Introduction" section, meth users are not all your typical "let's get wasted" type of people. So unlike other drugs that seem to appeal to a particular fringe demographic or sociographic group that want to "dull" their experience of life, methamphetamine also appeals to those people who are actually trying to "intensify" their experience of life and/or "keep up" with the lifestyle they've created.

That means that in addition to the usual suspects for addiction, meth holds a unique appeal for people working sixteen hour days climbing the corporate ladder, kids relentlessly engaged in role playing games, soccer moms juggling work and home responsibilities, ravers, young girls interested in losing weight, or keeping off what they've already lost, people in the gay community who need the energy and virility meth renders, so on and so on. As shown in our "Other Faces Of Meth" section, meth has an unusually diverse appeal, attracting people not typically associated with illicit drug use.

Then add the people who discover meth solves the problems of low self-confidence and low self-esteem. In fact it makes you supremely self-confident. And is that type of feeling addictive? You bet it is - it's intensely addictive! We could also add all the people who are currently taking Ecstasy on a regular basis and aren't aware that it's often adulterated with methamphetamine. Ostensibly, some of these people (not all) are "meth users in training."

Even many people who have dabbled in meth a few times and then stayed away from it will tell you that they decided to stay away because they perceived it was too good, and luckily they had the wisdom to leave it alone. So while meth is not the "drug of choice for everyone," few people complain about the meth high. Just about everyone reports that it's a terrific high. At least of course, in the beginning.

The point is, it is an extremely addictive drug once it takes hold, and has a major impact on systems within the brain. Resultantly, a very high percentage of users resist treatment until they are court-ordered. And last but not least, most treatment facilities are just beginning to learn the intricacies of treating the meth addict, and few have the funding necessary to offer the addict the treatment durations and multi-dimensional approaches they require. So in terms of people revolving between treatment, relapse, active use, treatment, etc., meth users are more likely to be caught up in that vicious cycle, simply because the type of treatment they're receiving is not nearly adequate.

We have a drug that easy and inexpensive to make. Even on a small scale of production it's profitable, the production interval is as low as 24 hours, and if need be, the production facilities can be mobile and moved from place to place. The finished product is easily transportable from location to location, and there are even profits involved in transporting it from location to location.

The market for meth already exists everywhere that anyone cares to exploit it and it's a growth market because among many other factors, it's cheap and virtually anyone can afford it in the beginning. And it reaches into demographics that other drugs just don't because it addresses the unique needs of those demographics that other drugs can't. And of course, it's a terrific initial high, it's easily added to other stimulants and it's extremely addictive. And while meth is treatable, it's a more complicated addiction to treat, an expensive addiction to treat, and an addiction that contains dynamics we're just beginning to learn about.

Not a pretty picture, is it? On the next page, we look at methamphetamine from the perspective of "collateral damage." And once again you'll see that from this perspective as well, meth is in a class by itself.