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"There really isn't a typical profile for the meth user. It's not just the homeless person sitting on the street corner. It's not just kids going off to a park doing this kind of stuff. It's soccer moms.
You have just as much likelihood finding a meth house in a rural farm area as you do in a suburban million-dollar home."
Kelly Guertzgen, Health Education Coordinator
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The social system creates drug addicts. Until the social system changes, drugs will always be used by certain people to change their reality.
Thus, the meth problem might ebb and flow, rise and fall, but like all other drug problems, it will never go away. Even if its present incarnation is eradicated, something will take its place. As long as the NEED is there, the DEMAND will always be there.
C. Davis - Social Worker
'Meth-Mouth' Turning Up In The Yukon
Yukon dentists who are dealing with what they suspect is damage from crystal meth use say they are seeing more cases all the time.
CBC.ca
January 24th, 2007
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Upstate New York Police Make One Of The Biggest Recent Meth Seizures
Working meth lab and 22 ounces of meth oil seized.
Glen Falls Post Star
January 24, 2007
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(Page 7 of 10 In This Section) Registries cont'd. Problem Four: Are We "Re-Introducing" The Offender To Hopelessness? This is by far and away, the BIGGEST problem. At the bottom of EVERY addiction is a feeling on the part of the addict that all or part of their life is hopeless and the best way to solve or cope with that problem is to medicate. When we look at an alcoholic, or someone addicted to cocaine, heroin, pain pills, or methamphetamine, their use of the substance isn't their problem, it's the symptom of their problem. Their real "problem" is how they solve their problems. And how they solve their problems is by avoiding them or escaping from them by changing their mental state and that's done by "medicating" with their drug of choice. So Is This The Scenario What We Want To Play Out? You start by using methamphetamine, (for one or more of many reasons) and you graduate to full-blown addiction. Next, both to support your own habit, and because meth causes you to make really stupid decisions, you are charged with making a batch. And at great expense to the taxpayer, and with a total upheaval of your family, you're prosecuted and incarcerated. And let's say you're one of the lucky ones, and not only do you actually receive treatment for meth addiction while you're incarcerated (the vast majority don't), you actually receive quality treatment for it. (a microscopic number do) And by "quality treatment," we mean not only does it treat your addiction to meth, it also looks at you holistically, and determines what other areas of your functionality are in need of "rehab." (Education, anger management, problem solving, depression, anxiety, planning, goal-setting, parenting, etc. etc.) And you would be lucky, because about 1% of all people treated for meth addiction would get that level of treatment for the proper duration of time. Welcome Back! So now you're out of prison, ready to rebuild your life. And on the first four jobs that you apply for, you're turned down because your name is on a meth registry. And you can't get housing because your name is on a meth registry. And even though your 12 Step program sponsor tells you that to recover from addiction you have to go out and help others, your application to volunteer somewhere is refused because your name is on a meth registry. And the best you can do for transitional "safe" housing is go on a three to six month waiting list. Naturally, things start to look hopeless, with no way out. And we know that the brain of both addicts and recovering addicts still has that "default" mode of thinking waiting to kick in because it's been conditioned to it. So in many cases, with no other way out, you will handle this hopelessness as you handled it before - you'll medicate with your "medication of choice," which in this scenario, is methamphetamine. And after that relapse, you'll feel tremendous guilt and remorse. And odds are, you're going to "medicate" that away too. And now the cycle is complete, and on it goes. What Have We Accomplished? So what has the meth registry accomplished for society in this scenario? Are we better off now that we've taken a recovering meth addict with even a glimmer of hope and forced them back on the street to become an active abuser again? Are we really more secure, now that this person is once again lying, cheating, stealing, robbing, ignoring their children, committing acts of violence and all the other things that potentially go with meth addiction? We also have to be aware that a high percentage of people convicted of a meth crime (particularly simple possession) are women - often women with children. You put their name on a registry, you're affecting more than the "offender," you're also affecting the future of their children. Is that what we want to do? Should they be paying for their mom's crime as well by being denied a place to live because their mom's name is on a registry? We think there has to be a better way. So If You Can't Get A Job, And You Have No Money...... The "crime of choice" for many meth addicts is identity theft, so if they're forced to (and many will be) they'll circumvent it by going back to the crime of choice for a great many active meth addicts - identity theft. And that's not going to be too hard, particularly since some of these registries don't include a photograph. But note, we said that identity theft is the crime of choice for active meth addicts, not the "crime of choice" for recovering meth addicts trying to re-build their lives. As long as they're given an opportunity to recover, and at least be allowed to earn re-integration to society, chances are they won't choose to perpetrate a crime of any kind. But we can't hold the equivalent of a gun to their head and keep denying them opportunities for employment, or housing, or even volunteer work. Sooner or later, they're going to give up trying to do it the right way, and they're going to back to their old ways. And ultimately, when they end up back in the court system, and or back in jail, we have to ask ourselves, how has society benefited? All we've done is start the cycle again, caused great disruption to the lives of many in the process, and paid through the nose for what amounts to nothing positive. And in our opinion, we shouldn't be giving recovering addicts less opportunities to rejoin mainstream society, we should be giving them even more opportunities. On the next page of this section we'll take a look at how misinformation and exaggeration can actually back-fire and make things worse. And there's even good scientific evidence to back that up
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